By: Ryan Wold

Ryan Wold
Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:03:00 +0000

Jeff,  I've had similar experiences in government: identifying opportunities to innovate by using lightweight technologies or more modern concepts to solve existing problems, and my results have been mixed.

Logan's article revolves around the theme of an antiquated government culture.  Government as a system was not designed for innovation, at least not at the rate, pace, and scope we expect today's innovators.

A large disconnect I see with OpenGov and innovation in the city is public use and management of technology.  As in most regards, government lags behind private sector advancements.  With agile techniques continuing to spread, lowering the walls between IT and subdivisions of an organization, private companies have learned that technology is not longer icing on the cake, but a core ingredient to virtually all operations.  Unfortunately, in government, IT is often relegated to its own department, and the walls in and out of those departments are often steeped in bureaucracy and also heavily risk averse.  Thus, governments charged to innovate have lots of organizational inertia to overcome.

In terms of government IT staff; their roles are changing greatly, and quickly.  Just as cloud services have organizations rethinking servers and DBA's, the same challenges are facing governments - how to adapt to the technology, and also, how do adapt their staff and organization.  Plus, collective bargaining agreements increase the challenge of re-organizing, effectively solidifying the structure of working staff, adding a layer of complexity to an organization tasked with re-inventing itself.  What do you do with the legacy Cobol developer who has 25 years experience? An IT manager looking to implement more streamlined solutions quickly discovers that government jobs themselves have inherent political value to the organization - that is not to say value to the public.  But when program and budgets are heavily tied to prior commitments, it is both politically and organizationally difficult to break the cycle.  Growing the size of departments is often touted as 'increasing service levels' or 'job growth', rather than what the public often perceives: too many dead leaves on an overgrown tree.

In my experience, proprietary solutions are sought by governments because they are perceived as less risky, and ultimately, sustainability is a very real challenge in government because of high elected and staff turnover.  I agree with this procurement practice in a minor respect.  Is government's core competency to build software?  I hope not in most cases. The real issue for me comes down to cost and value.  Open-source technologists espouse lower costs and a culture of participation and sharing as valuable reasons to consider open solutions.  However, government measures value in many other ways.

So, what might work to help this situation?

Staff Education.  Basic data classes for Elected and Senior Management would go a long way to empowering them with the vocabulary needed to more effectively interface with more technical resources in the organization.  ie: Every manager should know what systems their organization uses and that they can get data out of them in a useful format.

Public Education:  As citizens become aware and familiar with tools that give them the ability to participate, watchdog, influence, and collaborate with government, a shift will occur.  Politicians will have less leeway to operate without accountability and citizens will be able to engage in public affairs on terms they are more accustomed to: ie: online.  I think its important here to promote collaboration and downplay criticism here.

Collaboration All Around the Space: Government innovation connotes a responsibility within government to drive innovation.  I'd argue that what is really needed is an openness to innovation.  I'm weary that a typical government innovation project may proceed like other government projects: waterfall.  ie: We'll allocated staff and budget and send them off to "go innovate".  As an alternative, I'd propose organizations around the space (ie: Code for America, Sunlight Foundation, Civic Commons, etc) continue to work with governments to build a culture of openness, sharing, and re-use, such as city engagements, and multi-city/region partnerships amongst municipalities.  In this way, municipalities will learn how to cooperate with their peers, resulting in case studies, etc that will foster more good behavior.

I suppose I'm really talking about refactoring government. How do we modify the structure of government while respecting the functions it already performs?  How can we open up conversations about what governments really should do?  How can citizens encourage more effective government?  Technology will play a key and central role, but it remains a means: a tool to support the work and is not and end in itself.  Government too is a means and not an end in itself.  I'd like to codify meaning into the municipal systems through open metrics.