Which of the following is the toughest question for top state and local elected officials to answer: A. How do we balance the budget? B. What needs to be done to improve services to our citizens? C. How can technology enable government to be more responsive to citizen needs? D. What can be done to get government agencies to share information with one another?
Most of you probably chose A, B or C--and understandably so. But the real stumper for most governors, mayors and agency heads is D. At a recent public forum, a particularly thoughtful and sharp elected official was so confounded by the information-sharing question that he took a pass on answering it at all.
He is not alone: Almost everyone at the top of the government heap seems to be baffled by this disarmingly simple issue. It's true that there are formidable obstacles: stovepipe systems, lack of funding, turf concerns, existing policies and priorities. But, apparently, government leaders would rather tackle the challenges of failing schools, rising health care costs and finding money for homeland security before taking on the information-sharing bugaboo. Can it really be more difficult to get everyone to disseminate data among themselves than to eliminate billion-dollar budget deficits?
This state-of-affairs is no surprise to Donald Marchand, professor of Information Management and Strategy at the International Institute of Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. In the early 1980s, while at Syracuse University, Marchand pioneered the study of information and technology management in state and local government in this country. He was an early proponent of having those governments establish high-level executive positions that would be responsible for the management of information and technology.
A recent book co-authored by Marchand, "Making the Invisible Visible," examines the information-management practices of 103 companies in 26 industries and 37 countries. To account for differences in the capabilities of organizations to manage and use information effectively, Marchand and his colleagues coin the term "Information Orientation" or the "IO" of an organization. IO comprises three capabilities, only one of which is related to the ability of an organization to manage IT applications and infrastructure. The other two IO capabilities are concerned with managing information over its life-cycle and with the ability of the organization to instill and promote behaviors and values for the effective use of information.
It is this third capability that goes to the heart of the issue in sharing information in government. The study concludes that the exchange of information--between individuals on a team and across functional and organizational boundaries--is one of the critical information values that senior executives need to instill in their organizations. Values and behaviors such as information sharing are, the book suggests, just as important to increasing organizational performance as is having the latest and greatest technology. Organizations that demonstrate a high IO do so after years of promoting the right information-sharing values.
So what are top state and local executives to do to increase their jurisdictions' IO quotient? For starters, put the "I" back in CIO. After all, the job title is Chief Information Officer, not Chief Technology Officer. Increasingly preoccupied with technology, CIOs have little, if any, time left to focus on information.
Secondly, begin to experiment with new, low-cost approaches to sharing information. Try different strategies and see what works and what doesn't. Get some pilot projects underway and reinforce the effort to exchange information, even if at first it doesn't lead to noticeable improvements in performance.
Third, begin to raise expectations and assign responsibility and accountability for results. The truism that "you can't manage what you don't measure" is as valid for information sharing as it is for achieving improvements in education test scores. An accepted measurement system for comparing the states on their information- sharing practices is desperately needed.
The lack of information sharing may be the proverbial elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. Yet, I am hard pressed to find any area of government performance that isn't in some way significantly affected negatively by the lack of information sharing. State and local governments can't afford to wait much longer before they move past the talk and start walking the information-sharing walk.
