Bill's Notebook

Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, describes the inefficient use of technology of federal government at a recent speech.  Inefficiencies such as forms that are entered online, printed out, passed around in manila folders, and then rekeyed into another computer system.  This is nothing new and federal employees are quite aware of these inefficiencies.   So, why don’t the agencies just adopt new technologies?

It can be summed up as the agencies are more comfortable with the devil they know then a possible devil they don’t know.  A fascinating study on why rural hospitals don’t readily adopt new technologies describes six barriers to adoption.  Understanding and confronting these barriers can help overcome inefficiencies.

The first barrier, cost, is an obvious one and quite relevant to current state of the federal budget.  Legality, the second barrier is also a well-understood cause.  President Obama’s policy of Open Government addresses and overcomes these barriers.  But the remaining four barriers may be more difficult because they are tied into the culture of government.

Time is a barrier because implementing and learning a new technology may take longer to realize than an impatient public is willing to give.  Political appointees also like to see immediate results and may not have the patience for a new technology.  Allied with time are the barriers of inefficiency and complexity.  Poorly implemented new technology solutions will provide “proof” that the old system may be ineffective but not as bad as the new “ineffeciency.”

The above barriers all feed into the fundamental barrier – the fear of change.  Technologies and processes are embedded in the culture of the organization.  Technology adoption is not plug-n-play where you can easily swap one process for another.  Adopting new technologies takes time, trust, and the willingness to tolerate failure as the employees learn to use the new technologies.  Again, change is not about technology but about people.

UPDATE: Firoze Lafeer makes an insightful comment that government should require contractors to set aside funds for developing Plan B innovations while creating the Plan A innovation.

As I read about the plans for implementing Open Government, I decided that I needed to reread The Halo Effect … and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers.  Not because I am dismissive of open government but because I want it to succeed.  And one way of ensuring success is to make sure the plans don’t fall victim to these management delusions:

1)  WhiteHouse.gov goes Open Source (Drupal) – actually reported on10/25/2009 but the original story has been updated to include the contractors: Acquia and Phase2.  The contractors also had folks at the OpenGov workshop I attended.

2) U.S. Department of Defense to allow Social Networking on unclassified computers – Check out their Social Hub.

3) Pew Research Study shows we get our news through social networks – “The latest study from Pew Internet analyzes the news Americans are consuming and various different ways they find news. Based on a sample of 2,259 adults, the study reveals that three fourths of the people (75%) who find news online get it either forwarded through e-mail or posts on social networking sites, and half of them (52%) forward the news through those means.”

4) UK Newspaper, The Guardian, opens new API on political information – You don’t even have to register to access APIs that will feed election and political information into apps that you create.

So, governments are going open source and embracing social networking at the same time people’s news consumption shifts to online social networking applications.  Almost a perfect storm of open government.

This is the workshop I attended on February 17th.  Amazing amount of great material in such a short time.  The final document (available in Word):

http://opengovdirective.pbworks.com/f/Final+Results+of+the+February+Open+Government+Directive+Workshop.doc

Where I was today.  Great ideas and discussions!