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CONFERENCE REPORT: MANAGING TECHNOLOGY
Tech Comes of Age
Improving service, enhancing value, creating community
SEATTLE — In state and local governments, the world of information technology is rapidly evolving from a focus on the nuts and bolts of systems to a sophisticated understanding of the power of technology to gather and analyze information. Put more simply: The emphasis in IT used to be on the “T.” Now it’s on the “I.”
From start to finish, the discussion at Governing’s 10th annual Managing Technology conference held recently in Seattle centered on the use of technology to transform data into a potent tool for improving service, enhancing value and creating community.
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Washington Governor Christine Gregoire | |
Washington Governor Christine Gregoire introduced this theme as she opened the conference. Technology, she said, is a means to an end. And for Gregoire and other leaders, one of the most important of those ends is the ability to determine whether government is successfully carrying out its mission. Gregoire has instituted a systematic program that regularly measures the results of agency efforts and holds the agencies accountable for improving those results. The key, Gregoire said, is finding the reason something is not working and how it can be improved. "It's relatively easy to show what's happening," she said. "It's a lot harder to say why. Technology, to me, is just a tool for getting to the why.
“It’s all about finding the right information and using it to make the lives of our citizens better,” she said. “Technology is the marvelous avenue we have to get us there.”
Indeed, many government chief information officers will tell you that technology itself is no longer the most important part of their jobs. Just ask Jerry Simonoff, the director of IT investment for the state of Virginia. He’s currently managing a massive effort with Northrop Grumman to modernize Virginia’s IT infrastructure. It’s an unprecedented, $2 billion partnership — the largest public-private IT deal in the country. And as Simonoff told conferees in Seattle, upgrading the technology was the easy part. “Technology is a very small part of the change. It's an important part, and it has to be done right. But the truth is, we know how to do that. The cultural change is what you're really doing here.”
That point was reinforced by Steve Henderson, director of planning and project management for Nebraska’s CIO. “The most important aspects of managing technology through tough times are trust and communication,” he told conference attendees. “It’s got nothing to do with technology, really.”
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Nebraska's Steve Henderson | |
Investing in the Future
Notwithstanding this shift in emphasis, states and localities are embarking on a new wave of updating and replacing aging technology, said John Gillispie, the Iowa CIO and current head of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. “We’re reaching the end of the lifecycle of the systems put in in advance of Y2K,” he said. “We’re entering a new era of investment in IT in the public sector.”
Today, however, IT investment is more interconnected with management and planning than ever before, said Nebraska’s Henderson. Technology has become an integral part of the discussion at all levels of government. “The biggest change I’ve seen over the past 10 years has been the role and the sense of technology, and the value that’s now placed on information. IT used to be at a different table, but now we’re at the center of the conversation.”
The area of human resources exemplifies that change. Until recently, there seemed to be little connection between technology and recruiting and retaining employees. Today, technology is revolutionizing government recruitment and hiring. In the forefront of that change is the state of Missouri, which has launched a job-fair kiosk in Second Life, a virtual world where users interact via avatars. (Missouri CIO Dan Ross likes to point out that his Second Life avatar has sparkly shoes.)
But other less flashy innovations have streamlined the time it takes to hire a new employee and helped government market itself to the best and brightest of potential workers. Dana Jefferson, Delaware's human resources director, said her state’s old recruitment Web site was a turn-off for people applying for a job. “I used to say that if our site was on Match.com, it would get very few dates.” So the state redesigned its hiring site. It now has real-time data about available jobs, and potential employees can sign up to receive e-mails whenever positions in their desired fields open up. The new site also includes features such as a Total Compensation Calculator, which shows prospective employees the combined value of all the benefits that come with a government job.
Technological innovations are also revolutionizing the area of security and safety. Leaders from Washington State and the neighboring Canadian province of British Columbia described how they worked together to create enhanced driver’s licenses, which residents can use in place of a passport to cross and re-cross the U.S.-Canada border. Part of the motivation for this initiative was the prospect of large crowds and long lines at the border as visitors and athletes move between the two countries for the 2010 Olympics.
Creating this new identification vehicle was a massive undertaking, involving 33,000 hours of IT work as well as long hours of cross-border coordination. So far, the state has received more than 30,000 requests for the enhanced license, which is delivered much more quickly than a U.S. passport. “Getting a passport takes a long time,” said Scott Heinze, homeland security advisor to Governor Gregoire. “The idea here is to have something that’s convenient and cost-effective, but most of all secure.”
Creative Communications
The innovations of Web 2.0 are driving the pace of change in government. Like Missouri’s recruiting kiosk in Second Life, some states, cities and counties are turning to the latest interactive, Web-based technologies to help them gather and disseminate information and recruit talent. Others, such Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, are making use of social networking sites such as MySpace. Reed has launched a robust MySpace page that includes photos, a blog and information about voting and elections.
Seattle has fused two sets of data into one application, creating a “mashup” that enables citizens to view a map of real-time emergency response calls on its Web site. In Los Angeles, the fire department uses Twitter — a form of short, quick-hit blogging — to gather and spread up-to-the-minute information about emergencies. Other government agencies are using custom wikis — collaborative, open-source sites — to gather and discuss ideas within a department.
Sites such as YouTube and Flickr are increasingly being used to distribute information to citizens. California’s Franchise Tax Board has posted a series of original YouTube videos to help residents understand how to pay their taxes online. In Arlington County, Virginia, police upload security video feeds of bank robberies to their YouTube page — which has helped solve crimes. And earlier this year, when Seattle needed to inform residents about road closures due to heavy snow, officials simply posted photos of the blocked roads to Flickr, an online photo-sharing site, with a link from the city’s homepage.
Creating Community
Innovations like these are exciting new ways for governments to interact with citizens. But there are potential problems. In most of these cases, a government is using a site that was developed and popularized for social, casual uses. That’s a great way to communicate with people who are already accustomed to those sites. But will those applications be robust enough to handle governments’ needs? What if the Twitter site goes down when you’re trying to post updates about a fire emergency?
Using these kinds of commercial applications also leads to concerns about access and privacy. There’s a risk of unauthorized access – and then there’s the fact that many states and localities prohibit public-sector workers from accessing the very sites their governments are utilizing. There’s an inherent irony when your own employees are blocked from seeing information their government has posted on MySpace or YouTube.
And there are legal questions. For example, when exactly do some of these new modes of communicating create public records? Is your presence in Second Life part of the public record — and subject to open-records laws and retention requirements? If your agency uses a wiki site to collect ideas, must you save every version of that document?
Gary Robinson, director of the Department of Information Services for the state of Washington, had the answer to the public-records question. "Really, it's the same thing we've been dealing with for years," he said. "We started documenting and storing emails on mainframe computers 10 years ago, and we need to treat this the same way."
The key, Robinson said, is determining whether you're using a particular technology to conduct the business of government. So if some third-party user — say, the site FixMyStreet.com — creates a mashup of official graffiti reports with a map of your town, it's not your responsibility to maintain of record of it. But if you as a city employee start using that map to help manage how you clean up your city's graffiti, then you most likely need to treat it as a public record.
It's worth figuring out these answers — and it's worth employing these new technologies in your city, county or state, said Bill Schrier, Seattle's chief technology office. Web 2.0 innovations help government become what it's supposed to be, he said.
"What is government? It's about people coming together in a community to accomplish what they can't do as individuals. And that's just what these technologies do. They make government a stronger part of the community. And that's why we should be embracing them."