Legislators also dealt with the strategic importance of another segment of the transportation revolution -- air travel -- and government took a leadership role in assuring this transportation mode's continued expansion.
Recently, we have witnessed another revolution as advances in information and communication technologies are exploding at a staggering rate. This revolution has far-reaching effects as everyone associated with information systems (IS) must address new technologies with a different perspective: technology will change faster than projects are implemented.
Enterprises are changing the structure of their IT departments to deal with the increasing demands of business communities. These demands increase as businesses recognize improved technological capabilities and individuals envision how their areas of responsibility can be more effectively supported. Traditional approaches to data processing cannot work with, and respond to, such demands.
Given this, it is difficult to understand why many legislators have not embraced, promoted and led this technological revolution in communication and information management. This revolution can help chart the future of government services and limit the costs of delivering such critical services. Legislators can exercise a leadership role in the application of these technologies. According to the National Governors' Association (NGA), "states are among the largest consumers of telecommunications and information systems."
In spite of this purchasing power, we are only beginning to see vestiges of government leadership in this arena. NGA's Center for Best Practices in Telecommunications and Information Systems now considers "how governors can take advantage of emerging technology to improve delivery of public services and promote economic development." The governors are "realizing the potential of advanced telecommunications, and information systems is more than electronics, software and wires. It is a combination of physical, institutional and human infrastructure that comes together only when there is vision and leadership to guide its development." Yet, few governors' State of the State addresses identified the strategic role of the technology revolution in supporting administrative initiatives.
Hopefully, we will soon see all government leaders recognize their critical role in the IT revolution. Some recognition has already been done. For example, Anaheim, Calif., installed a high-speed, fiber-optic ring around the city for agencies to pipe into that network while eliminating redundancy in the communications infrastructure. However, few states' high-speed, statewide networks to support state operations have a comprehensive strategic plan that integrates advanced technologies to achieve business objectives. Without a comprehensive plan, there is limited ability to determine if "physical, institutional and human" infrastructures actually optimize our investment and meet public expectations.
Governments have historically helped fund strategic research projects -- many leading to technological advances, including the Internet. But IS leadership is different. In Anaheim, there is a common infrastructure to support city business; but redundancy, which technology could eliminate, could create redundant applications unless government business objectives are clear on document or electronic data interchange.
Legislators and Leadership
Legislators must develop a governance vision using business strategies based on concrete, enterprise-wide business objectives. Business strategies should expect that government business managers use enabling technologies, so legislators should set clear expectations for agencies to improve service delivery and administrative business models.
Service delivery agencies lacking statewide strategic business plans that embrace and apply new technologies are moving ahead with independent projects. But in the two or three years it takes to complete these projects, technology will have progressed a generation or two. Meanwhile, it is likely that governance and operational expectations will have changed. So, on a fast-moving jet, how do legislators assume leadership without slowing transformation to a crawl?
To work within this reality, a business and governance vision must integrate interests of business and IT support units. Enterprise-wide business models must also recognize the technology need across functional, departmental and agency boundaries, and organizations and individuals should collaborate on like needs.
Legislatures must recognize that connectivity, integration and shared resources depend upon high-speed, enterprise-wide communication, making the communications and information infrastructure a critical component. Technology for technology's sake can be a public-fund sinkhole, but let technology help restore confidence in government services. It may be necessary for an organization to implement a "model office" to pilot and prove tangible benefits of new technologies, using the lessons learned as input to strategic planning and business objectives.
Create Accountability
As for funding, impose individual administrative accountability for performance, timelines, budgets and responsibility for deviating from original business objectives. We fire coaches, not teams, so expect timely success from development efforts. Set rewards matched to expectations and benefits from successful projects. Motivate teams to abandon, earlier rather than later, projects that will not achieve expected benefits or meet business- model objectives. The most thorough planning and skilled project management cannot always remove all potential institutional barriers to success, so develop in managers a willingness to not "throw good money after bad." Excessive funds spent on services back to the public is one thing; excessive funds spent on finding ways to deliver services is another.
Evolving Regulatory Policy
Policy and regulation from the pre-information management era bind business processes. Legislators must modify wording that demands paper applications, hard copy signatures, documentation "on file," linear reviews and approval of actions. In the worst situations, such policies provide excuses as to why agencies or departments cannot eliminate burdensome procedures. Further, the complexity in IS that must support such restrictions increases cost and limits adaptability of systems when policy changes.
The gap must be bridged between legislative, business and IT responsibilities. The partnership structure is a critical potential failure point in effectively managing policy implementation. Legislators are in a position to identify the importance of collaboration and coordination against only enterprise-wide business objectives rather than department-wide or program-wide policy objectives.
An IS impact analysis can prevent misplaced words from driving up the cost of systems/tools and provide an opportunity to assess the cost of system support when specific wording is demanded to achieve the desired outcome. The impact of legislation and the willingness to fund the impact's real costs should be considered in the same step. After all, it may not make sense to spend $50 million and a few years to change information systems to implement legislation that generates a benefit barely above that cost.
Prototype Policy Outcomes
Many states have systems that help expedite the paperwork process and ensure legislation status information is widely available. The gap, however, is between improving the policy-making process and improving the effect of proposed legislation in advance. Legislators should use departmental and service delivery systems to test probable legislative outcomes.
Planning and testing for outcomes, based on enterprise-wide governance and business strategies, is equally important in the legislative and service-delivery processes. The IT capability to achieve this exists in many of our application systems.
Piecemeal approaches to IT investment are improving operation efficiency. The marriage, however, between government service delivery and the IT revolution demands strong leadership, if public funds are used. Without strong leadership, costly technology solutions will layer greater redundancy and duplication upon existing redundant and duplicative government operations, increasing government's overall cost.
Policy-makers must develop business strategies that bring together "physical, institutional and human" infrastructures capable of altering the current government and technology path. Without transforming our approach to gleaning only components of value from the information and communications revolution, the major winners will be the companies that compete for product and solution loyalty in the government arena.
June Table of Contents
