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Sharon Dawes: A Lesson in Leadership

We discovered first hand the limits of wonderful technology. There were thousands of errors. Some people received no check at all. Some people received too little, and three very happy elderly gentlemen received $6,000 each

Sharon Dawes, director of the Center for Technology in Government, received the Rudolph W. Giuliani Leadership Award Monday at the GTC Executive Leadership Institute in Albany. At the presentation, Dawes told a story about her somewhat trying entry into public-sector IT and the lessons she learned from it. In 1973, Dawes, a recent college graduate working for the New York State Department of Social Services, joined a project transferring assistance programs for aged, blind and disabled people from the state to the Social Security Administration. Here is the story in her own words:

Sharon Dawes
The thinking behind the transfer was that the caseload shouldn't be in the welfare system, that what they needed was a respectable reliable source of steady if modest income, much like today's Social Security retirement program. My job was part of a task force responsible for transferring the records of 180,000 people from the welfare offices in counties in New York City to the Social Security computer in Baltimore. This was the very first computerized database for any welfare program in New York State.

We thought we were very cool. We worked with every county and every welfare center in New York City, to gather the records, transform them into the federal format, keep them up to date, and prepare for the changeover on January 1, 1974. And as the year wore on, we saw just how complicated the job really was. And we began to worry whether things were going well. But the Social Security Administration was the expert in information technology, with the biggest domestic information systems in the world. And they said 'don't worry.' So we didn't worry.

We went on gathering records, transferring records, and on the day of the changeover -- which was a bitterly cold January day -- we discovered first hand the limits of wonderful technology. There were thousands of errors. Some people received no check at all. Some people received too little, and three very happy elderly gentlemen received $6,000 each.

People lined up outside welfare offices, outside Social Security offices, all around the state. These were sick and old people, the average age was 82. They relied on caseworkers to solve their problems, but this program had no caseworkers. New York City government leased school busses to serve as waiting rooms to keep people warm outside Social Security offices in Manhattan and Queens. And one of those offices actually locked its doors against the crowd forming outside.

Some county social service agencies continued to serve people even though they no longer had any funds to do so. The state enacted an emergency assistance program, and slowly things began to stabilize.

The project was, in fact, a technological wonder. Social Security had built a single nationwide information system, from the computerized and mostly paper records from 50 states, and thousands of localities. They got the checks out on time, and the vast majority of them were correct. But the errors and omissions and confusions led to a huge loss of credibility for SSA at great financial, organizational and human cost.

This project was my first taste of public service, and my first taste of IT. It taught me very early that these two things exist in a very powerful but uneasy relationship. And the lessons of that project came forward with me into every job I've had since. Three lessons:
  • No initiative that makes use of IT can succeed on the basis of the technology.
  • The way government uses information can profoundly affect people's lives for both good and bad.
  • A public service program is an extraordinarily complicated mixture of principles, practices, policies, organization and information, and
  • no one understands it completely.
Today at CTG, a very talented bunch of people continue to put these lessons to work in partnership with an equally talented group of public managers, and generous corporate and academic partners. Because no one of us understands it all, we spend a lot of time together asking and answering questions, about services and process and organization and policy, and impacts of all kinds. And when we think we understand it well enough to try to make changes, we try to build some prototypes and experiment. The results for me have been more than exciting -- something new to learn every day, and satisfying beyond anything I had expected in my career, especially after that first experience in 1973.

We've worked on new services, we've worked in every possible area of public service, from criminal justice to human services to health care to financial management and on down the line. And, I have to admit, we've worked with some really cool technology.

We also try to share everything that we've learned through these projects throughout New York and the U.S., and now -- with the Internet -- throughout the world. You have honored me with this award, but I accept it on behalf of the true leaders out there. True leaders are people who take the risk to change things. Who step back from the demands of their own jobs and their own reputations, and take a broader perspective. Who have ideas and persistence and stamina and the patience to see it through. There are leaders like this sitting at tables all around this room, at the CIO Council, in the Forum, at CTG and in all the agencies. And I leave you with three words of advice: Keep it up!
Wayne E. Hanson served as a writer and editor with e.Republic from 1989 to 2013, having worked for several business units including Government Technology magazine, the Center for Digital Government, Governing, and Digital Communities. Hanson was a juror from 1999 to 2004 with the Stockholm Challenge and Global Junior Challenge competitions in information technology and education.