{"id":50,"date":"2004-10-12T12:43:35","date_gmt":"2004-10-12T16:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/2004\/10\/12\/the-state-of-e_government\/"},"modified":"2006-06-04T18:21:46","modified_gmt":"2006-06-04T22:21:46","slug":"the-state-of-e_government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/2004\/10\/12\/the-state-of-e_government\/","title":{"rendered":"The State of e_Government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"a49\"><\/a>This week I attended the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ec3.org\/\">National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council<\/a> meetings in Boise, Idaho.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s\u00a0 my <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cesarbrea\/stories\/storyReader$48\">account<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This week I attended the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ec3.org\/\"><strong><font color=\"#345877\" size=\"1\">National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council<\/font><\/strong><\/a> meetings in Boise, Idaho.\u00a0 The theme of the conference was \u201cGovernment in the Digital Age: Myths, Realities &amp; Promises &#8211; A Candid Assessment and Road Map for Success.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(I went on behalf of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ksg.harvard.edu\/exec_ed\/3e\/index.html\"><strong><font color=\"#345877\" size=\"1\">E-Government Executive Education (3E) Project<\/font><\/strong><\/a> at Harvard&#8217;s JFK School of Government (KSG), where I am working with <a href=\"http:\/\/ksgfaculty.harvard.edu\/jerry_mechling\"><strong><font color=\"#345877\" size=\"1\">Professor Jerry Mechling<\/font><\/strong><\/a> to develop a new online application called the Compass.\u00a0 The Compass, built on <a href=\"http:\/\/dotlrn.org\/\"><strong><font color=\"#345877\" size=\"1\">.LRN<\/font><\/strong><\/a> with the support of IBM, includes assessment, benchmarking, and library tools which will support both the 3E Project&#8217;s executive education programs, and perhaps later other KSG and other programs.\u00a0 We showed an early version of the Compass to 25 execs gracious enough to give us their time, and their response and feedback were both encouraging and useful.<\/p>\n<p>The first \u201cproduction\u201d use of the Compass prototype will be for a 3E program we&#8217;ll be running in December called \u201cLeadership in a Networked World: The 2005 Leadership Agenda\u201d.\u00a0 The purpose of the program is to help senior public sector executives and their advisors evaluate and set priorities among IT-enabled initiatives, not only in light of their potential value, but of the political calculus associated with them as well.\u00a0 After choosing a few to focus on, the program then considers how best to pursue these priorities given their associated political considerations.)<\/p>\n<p>Conferences can be a mixed bag.\u00a0 This was a good one.\u00a0 The participants included current and former state comptrollers, auditors, and CIOs.\u00a0 Vendors were represented by very experienced folks who had themselves been in the roles of the government participants and were well-known and respected.\u00a0 So in addition to a very collegial feeling there was little of the awkwardness and stiff hype that&#8217;s typical of other vendor-customer interactions.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d never been to Idaho before.\u00a0 Boise is a nice town, with some attractive architecture (state capitol, churches) and some incredible views.\u00a0 There&#8217;s a really good, inexpensive Basque restaurant called Bar Gernika across the street from the Grove Hotel where Jerry and I had lunch (lamb-dip sandwich: good) and Dan Combs and I had dinner (lamb stew: great).\u00a0 Apparently you can fish in the river that runs through town, though I didn&#8217;t get to try that.\u00a0 And of course it took me a bit to adjust to saying \u201chow-do\u201d to passersby, and to wait to cross until the light said I could.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s some of what I heard and learned (not necessarily a faithful transcription of what people said, presented, or intended).<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday morning&#8217;s plenary session was keynoted by Peter Harkness, the editor and publisher of <a href=\"http:\/\/governing.com\/\"><em><strong><font color=\"#345877\" size=\"1\">Governing<\/font><\/strong><\/em><\/a> magazine. His theme: the e-government revolution hasn&#8217;t really happened yet.\u00a0 My notes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>E-government hasn&#8217;t affected costs yet.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>From 1994 to 2003, the number of federal employees has shrunk from 2.2 million to 1.95 million, but this masks outsourcing to consultants<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Over the same period, total employment by states grew from 4.6 million to 5 million, and local public sector employment grew from 11.7 to 13.8 million<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>(I checked: US population grew 16%, or from 240M to 280M from 1990 to 2000.\u00a0 Per capita, we still have roughly the same number of government employees we used to.)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>So e-gov has not reduced costs, even though \u201conline v inline\u201d is progress&#8230;<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>The revolution requires integration<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Technology isn&#8217;t the obstacle<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Organizational balkanization is the real problem<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>The exception that proves the rule is the military<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>We&#8217;ve seen the power of network-centric warfare<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>The real enabler is the elimination of inter-service rivalry in the conduct of warfare<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Balkanization exists in many places in government<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Among local, state, and federal, but also within agencies and branches of government at each level<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Politics impede integration<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Here&#8217;s an example of how it&#8217;s made worse:<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Sophisticated parties + redistricting = primaries, not general elections are the actual places that public officials get selected with no enduring commitment to a moderate middle; add term limits to the mix and there&#8217;s little time to do the relationship building and horse-trading based on trust that allows room to get things done.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>Here&#8217;s another example of how the \u201cPolitics of Policy\u201d are dividing feds from states and locals:<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>FDA doesn&#8217;t want to allow importation of prescription drugs from lower-cost places like <\/span>Canada, having been persuaded by the pharmaceutical industry that the practice is unsafe for consumers.\u00a0 But Montgomery County, MD, where the taxpayer pays a prescription drug benefit for 80k retired public workers, says they are.\u00a0 And in an era where federal non-defense discretionary spending is eclipsed by the size of the annual budget deficit, federal ability to influence local practice with funding is diminishing.\u00a0 So incentives to cooperate on systems to ensure optimal use of drugs by seniors and other beneficiaries are also reduced.\u00a0 We also see this adversarial relationship in homeland security efforts<br \/>\n.<span \/><\/li>\n<li><span>State AG&#8217;s have been suing investment banks, mutual fund companies, pharmaceutical firms, utilities &amp; auto manufacturers, and have found themselves in court fighting not only these organizations but the federal government as well (e.g., California&#8217;s attempt to impose fleet mileage requirements in the state)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At lunch later that day, David Lewis, formerly the CIO of Massachusetts, gave me an example of the as-yet-unfulfilled promise of e-government.\u00a0 David observed that a really useful thing would be for DHS case workers to be able to enter some parameters that describe a particular person&#8217;s or family&#8217;s needs, and then to have that \u201cfiltering\u201d return a list of all of the relevant benefits\u00a0 available to that situation from across 600 -plus programs offered by over 40 agencies.\u00a0 He noted that the obstacle to this isn&#8217;t really technical, but the need to reconcile the words and languages that agencies use to characterize eligibility and relevant benefits.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Obviously this is a challenging thing to do.\u00a0 I offered that maybe one approach would be to complement traditional top-down reconciliation with a grass-roots \u201csocial entrepreneurship\u201d approach.\u00a0 This would entail a motivated 20-something grabbing some free software to build a demo, then getting a small grant to pay some moonlighting case workers and program staff to do an 80-20 cut at translating a significant subset of program eligibility requirements and benefits to some formal or <em>de facto<\/em> standard.\u00a0 It might only take three months, six at the outside, to have a reasonably useful tool.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Later in the afternoon, I attended a very interesting presentation by Glen Teal, who is the Portfolio Manager for Citizen &amp; Customer Services for the Manukau City Council in New Zealand.\u00a0 Glen was in the US at the invitation of Peoplesoft&#8217;s J.D. Williams, formerly the Idaho state comptroller (and a very wise and charming man).\u00a0 His presentation was a thorough and well-organized story of how they had implemented CRM software to permit the consolidation of service interfaces with citizens across a number of different agencies, which then permitted the selective outsourcing of the fulfillment of these services to private firms under different contracting schemes depending on how well-developed pre-existing markets for these services were.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Two lessons from his talk: first, never outsource relationship management with constituents; second, don&#8217;t try to create markets to outsource to where none previously existed.\u00a0 So, on the latter point, it makes no sense for the government to do engineering services because the private sector has a healthy market for this that can be relied on.\u00a0 However, private-sector dog catchers mostly do not exist in nature.\u00a0 Outsourcing this function inevitably leads to consolidation of an initially fragmented mom-and-pop market by enterprising ex-public sector execs.\u00a0 Once they achieve duopoly or something close, the government is at their mercy:\u00a0 pay or it&#8217;s \u201cRelease the hounds!\u201d.\u00a0 More politely, Glen called it \u201cmarket capture\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The theme of opportunities from consolidation, and the structural barriers to it, wove its way throughout a number of conversations I had.\u00a0 In the hallway between sessions, David Lewis and I chatted with Brian Ridderbush from Unisys about how Medicaid reimbursement rules encourage states to each develop their own benefit structures, which means perhaps $18 billion in additional expenses for variations in related claims processing systems.\u00a0 Is the variety worth it?\u00a0 I think we&#8217;re unlikely to find out.\u00a0 The federal money is now allocated in the form of block grants as part of the overall trend toward devolution.\u00a0 So the feds can&#8217;t prescribe any rationalization.\u00a0 The feds reimburse the states for 90 cents of every Medicaid dollar they spend, so the greater cost of variety is not a place states focus on to save money.<\/p>\n<p>Dan Combs, who was Iowa&#8217;s Director of Digital Government, gave me another example of this at dinner.\u00a0 He described how in Iowa there were 99 counties.\u00a0 The seat of each was located, when the state was established, at a distance of a day&#8217;s ride from the next.\u00a0 Horses typically traveled about 30 miles a day in 1850, so Iowa has lots of charming but subscale local governments in the era of the automobile.\u00a0 Does Iowa, with a population of 3M, really need 99 county governments?\u00a0 Maybe not, there&#8217;s some advantages and a lot of tradition in their favor.\u00a0 I guess it depends on what Iowans feel they can afford.<\/p>\n<p>I talked with a couple of legislative auditors about how the part-time nature of many state legislatures affects the continuity and will they need to initiate and sustain major change that consolidation requires.\u00a0 They noted that the pool tends to be limited to people who don&#8217;t typically have a lot of inclination or experience with the management of large organizations.\u00a0 Frequently, legislators are attorneys whose firms can cover for their absence while they serve in ways that also indirectly advance their firms&#8217; interests.\u00a0 Or, they are wealthy ranchers who can spare three months while <span \/>the snow covers their fields<span \/><span>.<\/span>\u00a0 This means part of the challenge for the bureaucrats is to try to educate legislators on what&#8217;s going on and how to deal with it effectively.\u00a0 But as one put it to me, \u201cIt&#8217;s sort of like trying to teach a pig to sing:\u00a0 it&#8217;s not very effective and it annoys the pig.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s a government to do in the face of all these limitations?<\/p>\n<p>One move is to de-emphasize new technology as the panacea.\u00a0 Pam Ahrens is CIO of Idaho.\u00a0 Idaho has been creative and ahead of the curve on e-government issues, but Pam noted that these days especially it&#8217;s people and not technology that&#8217;s on the critical path to change.\u00a0 So Idaho is de-emphasizing R&amp;D for S&amp;C \u2013 search and copy \u2013 while they focus in on people issues.\u00a0 After all, she notes, &#8220;Pioneers get killed, settlers get rich.&#8221;\u00a0 I had the strong sense as a visitor from Back East that I ought to take her word on this.<\/p>\n<p>Another approach is to \u201czero-base\u201d government.\u00a0 California seems to be pursuing this more radical approach.\u00a0 Governor Arnold is quoted as saying in the course of commissioning the California Performance Review, \u201cI don&#8217;t want to reorganize the boxes, I want to blow them up.\u201d\u00a0 Echoing this theme is the approach Michael Bloomberg is taking in New York.\u00a0 Accenture&#8217;s Ken Dircks, who is a leader in the firm&#8217;s 311 engagement with New York City, told me Thursday night about Hizzoner&#8217;s takeover of the New York City Board of Education.\u00a0 On hearing an explanation of why change would be tough to implement through a multi-tiered bureaucracy, the mayor simply ordered the physical buildings of an entire layer of the bureaucracy padlocked, effectively cutting \u201cmanagement\u201d in this layer out of the process and forcing a higher layer to deal directly with schools.<\/p>\n<p>Well now.\u00a0 But part of me feels it&#8217;s insufficient.\u00a0 Colin Powell&#8217;s \u201cPottery Barn\u201d rule likely applies here as well &#8212; \u201cYou break it, you own it.\u201d\u00a0 So part of owning it is showing the way ahead.\u00a0 And a general principle I believe in is that people are better at reacting than acting.\u00a0 Show them something real they can try out and use and you&#8217;ll have more impact than if you describe it to them in principle.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe open-source software can help make this experimentation more feasible and affordable.\u00a0 Friday morning I attended a session on open-source in government.\u00a0 The format was a debate between Daniel Greenwood from MIT&#8217;s Ecommerce Architecture Program and Stuart McKee, former Washington State CIO and now a government-sector \u201cevangelist\u201d at Microsoft (\u201cadvocate for Microsoft to the public sector and vice versa\u201d).\u00a0 Is open source ready for government, and vice versa?\u00a0 I won&#8217;t summarize the discussion, except to say of course that it depends on the specific need and the specific open-source project under consideration.\u00a0 But I did find a few recent, interesting articles on Microsoft and open-source in government.\u00a0 Reading them I&#8217;m reminded of Gandhi: \u201cFirst they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win\u201d.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 14.15pt; text-indent: -14.15pt\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>\u201cMicrosoft is expanding a program to give government organizations access to some of its tightly guarded software blueprints amid growing competition from rivals who make such source code freely available&#8230;\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/news\/business\/0,1367,65018,00.html?tw=rss.BIZ\"><strong><font size=\"1\"><font color=\"#345877\">Wired 9\/19\/04\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span>\u201cMicrosoft chief executive Steve Ballmer told resellers at the European Partner conference that anyone in danger of losing business to Star Office should email him and he would send in the cavalry&#8230;\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.com\/2004\/10\/06\/ballmer_staroffice_charge\/\"><strong><font color=\"#345877\" size=\"1\">The Register10\/6\/04<\/font><\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The next NECCC annual meeting is in Boston next November.<span \/><br \/>\n<span \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week I attended the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council meetings in Boise, Idaho.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s\u00a0 my account. This week I attended the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council meetings in Boise, Idaho.\u00a0 The theme of the conference was \u201cGovernment in the Digital Age: Myths, Realities &amp; Promises &#8211; A Candid Assessment and Road Map for Success.\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[589],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cesarbreastories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cesarbreadev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}