Mired in Methodology is dead on. Making bad processes work better won't make good outcomes more likely. It's the same gripe I have when it comes to IT project management.
Unfortunately in state government, "process" is a one-way street. It punishes civil servants that make mistakes, and as a consequence, few mistakes are made. Survival becomes the name of the game. Innovators and problem solvers learn to keep their heads down and their hopes low when even innovation has to be signed off. Or they move on.
So I was gratified to read the Center for Digital Government's "The Sawyer Principles" (free, registration required), which attempts to re-imagine a government that works better for you and me.
In the process it makes an important connection between the nature of information technology and state government.
In government circles there is a sore temptation to think too little of information technology. Government tends to view it as a tool to wring more efficiency out of the act of governing. Yet if you've ever heard the phrase "doing more with less," you know such efficiency comes at a cost, not the least to the public servants who bear the brunt and who must somehow make it all work.
Information technology is not a magic efficiency wand.
Does it enable us to do something 10x faster, or does communications and information technology enable us to do something differently? If I can discover and communicate with a hundred people -- five of whom can help me solve a tough problem -- in less time than it takes to peak over the cubicle walls, does that make a difference in what I do?
The Sawyer Principles strongly implies that the answer is yes. I agree and here's why.
In a couple of different ways, discovery is one of core principles of the media enterprise.
First, technology users have the megaphone. Tens of thousands of previously isolated voices brought to bear on a debate will change the nature of the conversation. Everyone has a voice. This conversation can only be ignored for so long. Participation for organizations that care about what people think is not an option.
Secondly, search has replaced "the single point of contact" for finding information. Rupert Murdoch made the point earlier this year to newspaper editors, who would like to remain relevant to information hungry audiences, but find themselves with far less authority over what news and information people consume. They can no longer count of being the focal point for news gatherers and will need to share the "public service franchise."
Murdoch likewise plans to stay ahead of the developing trend away from Web portals and the decline of the home page as a point of entry. Who needs a single point of entry when search can find it faster? An organization's past status is no guarantee of future relevance.
The world may be flat, but don't tell that to state government. Hierarchical organizations like state bureaucracies last served effectively as information aggregators sometime around the early 20th century. In a world awash with information, these structures tend to distort, not deliver or transmit, knowledge down the pyramid. It's a game of telephone gossip. All management can do is try to pre-arrange those contacts. In a time when the ability to find and organize any group of people has made peer production possible, those pre-arrangements may well prevent, not aid, clearer communications.
The realization that a worldwide community connected via the Web will always be more creative than any single organization ought to change how any single organization works. Yet as the original open source organization, government has moved far away from this understanding.
It's no coincidence that The Sawyer Principles talks at some length about Web services. State government and the Web technologies should be natural allies. Both are about the "Power of Us". But the inclination for many in government is to ask how this understanding can be applied to deliver government services more efficiently rather than how government might change the way it does business. The staff of the National Governors Association unfortunately makes this point plain in a recent briefing paper, "The View from the IT Industry -- What States Can Do to Improve Government Efficiency and Service Delivery."
It's a viewpoint that I find pretty uninspiring.
In contrast, The Sawyer Principles understands that open networks could give ordinary people -- who can speak, search and create in massively interconnected environment -- a significant role. "We the People," indeed. The paper suggests that government can innovate -- but not manage -- its way out of a tough spot.
Having praised it, I do, however, have one minor quibble. In the executive summary the authors say:
While not intended as a substitute for important literature on public policy, organizations change or even the use of technology, The Sawyer Principles provides a new starting point for thinking through the often intractable challenges of public service with a fresh perspective on possible models of leadership and collaboration.
The irony is that this creative reframing of the issues is more serious than much of what passes as insight today.
Reprinted from Wayne Hall's A Nation of the People and IP Addresses Weblog.
