The Information Age has propelled US corporations into new levels of profitability. The key is productivity - the more productive you are - the more money you make. The biggest contributor to productivity are - computers. With computers (and software) on everyone's desk - corporations became much more productive (and efficient).
I remember a joke I heard around the time of the 1st Gulf War. Saddam's government used computers that were hackable. Pentium-2's? They were (very) obsolete at the time. The punchline was - which organization has the largest user base of P2s? - The US Government.
By most accounts, the US Government today has no where near the computer automation that most private companies have today. Sure the NSA has great IT - but what about the Energy department?
I don't think it can be fixed. Not in the traditional way of budgets and planning and ... Here's the Plan.
While this is happening, you start a massive training program on the new software that ALL NEW AGENCIES will be using. In this way, employees whose Agencies have not yet been "converted" won't be so stressed out because they have confidence in their computer skills.
The team that built the new Agency stays and trains the employees that transfer after the cut-over. Once the "original" employees can run the new software and can do their jobs, the "build team" moves on to the next agency.
That's the rollover. You keep doing this (getting better and faster at it every time), until all of Washington is automated.
It's never that easy, I'm sure "winding down" old Agencies and maintaining their old data will have its costs. But you end up with high-functioning government that is more responsive (to both government and the public), more secure (security built into the software from the beginning), and more productive (and less expensive and smaller!).
I remember a joke I heard around the time of the 1st Gulf War. Saddam's government used computers that were hackable. Pentium-2's? They were (very) obsolete at the time. The punchline was - which organization has the largest user base of P2s? - The US Government.
By most accounts, the US Government today has no where near the computer automation that most private companies have today. Sure the NSA has great IT - but what about the Energy department?
I don't think it can be fixed. Not in the traditional way of budgets and planning and ... Here's the Plan.
Agency IT Rollover
Basically the idea is to build a new agency - and parallel an existing one. You decide up-front what software systems you will be using, and the staff of the new agency builds the forms and records needed to run the agency. When the software is debugged and is ready to run the agency's day-to-day operations, you cutover to the new agency.While this is happening, you start a massive training program on the new software that ALL NEW AGENCIES will be using. In this way, employees whose Agencies have not yet been "converted" won't be so stressed out because they have confidence in their computer skills.
The team that built the new Agency stays and trains the employees that transfer after the cut-over. Once the "original" employees can run the new software and can do their jobs, the "build team" moves on to the next agency.
That's the rollover. You keep doing this (getting better and faster at it every time), until all of Washington is automated.
It's never that easy, I'm sure "winding down" old Agencies and maintaining their old data will have its costs. But you end up with high-functioning government that is more responsive (to both government and the public), more secure (security built into the software from the beginning), and more productive (and less expensive and smaller!).
