Our new leaders will be working with an increasingly informed community that has access to technology at home, work and anywhere a smart phone has signal bars. They will also find a community that expects better access to government information and services, increased transparency and a government that zealously protects the privacy of their information.
Fresh off campaigns that heavily leveraged social networking technologies, our new policy makers should continue to use these very same technologies as tools for governance as they make the transition from campaigning to governing.
Today, Guam residents have generally better access to technology-based services at home than they do at work. The emerging segment of our population functions almost exclusively in a connected social ecosystem driven by platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Hulu. For this population group, the ability to socialize and transact from anywhere on demand will be a given. Many will know no other way.
For GovGuam to effectively participate in this environment, it must be able to quickly deliver information and services online. This requires a reliable and sustainable technology infrastructure, and a mindset that fosters innovation.
Thanks to strategic technology investments made possible by a combination of funding sources, this infrastructure now largely exists. This effort required a philosophical shift in GovGuam's approach to managing its technology resources and was premised on a coordinated investment approach that promotes the sharing of resources across agencies.
However, budget realities will always loom over GovGuam's ability to innovate. GovGuam spends under 1 percent of its budget on technology. When you contrast this with states that spend upward of 4 percent of their budgets on technology, the relative underinvestment by GovGuam is quite evident.
This underinvestment can manifest itself in a number of ways: limited or unreliable services, uneven support levels, equipment failure, insufficiently trained personnel and, more ominously, increased security and privacy risks.
The unabated demand for increased government automation, whether it is pre-clearing port cargo or applying for permits online, means we must continue to make sustainable technology investments based on a clear, strategic road map.
As our new leaders begin the task of governing and implementing their vision for GovGuam, they need to understand how technology might support that vision so they can establish reasonable and appropriate funding priorities.
We should also focus on maximizing the resources we currently have. With some creativity, it is possible to advance (albeit more slowly) the adoption of technology in the era of budget deficits and cost-cutting. Here are just a couple of ways:
- Provide incentive for savings. Start with the 1 percent number I mentioned earlier. As restrictive as that level of spending is, there are ways to spend it more efficiently. Centralize the technology budgeting review process under the Bureau of Information Technology and provide incentives to reduce costs by allowing the re-investment of realized savings back into government technology.
- Continue the government-wide approach to managing technology. This approach allows the government to minimize duplication and reduce cost. GovGuam needs to move away from the traditional IT management models that are not sustainable nor capable of supporting a connected community.
- Move government procurement online. Pursue procurement reforms so that the procurement process can be fully automated. This will foster more competition, reduce prices and result in more transparency in government procurement. Aside from ensuring fair competition, the procurement process should also allow the government to identify the products and solutions that are best suited for their needs. Currently, the lack of a proper request for information process results in less than optimal results, as individuals find themselves drafting specifications for products they are not familiar with.
- Engage federal partners. Federal grants are the main source of new technology investments for GovGuam. However, federal grant policies can result in uneven and unsustainable technology implementations. It is not unheard of to see relatively idle computers and personnel in one office while the office across the hall struggles with barely usable computers and no technical support. Thanks in part to state and local government efforts, federal agencies are becoming more receptive to aligning their technology investments with local government technology plans.
- Leverage the cloud. OK, this one may seem a bit technical, but bear with me. As I mentioned earlier, many political campaigns leveraged free, cloud-based social networking platforms this election cycle. Cloud-based services have been in use in GovGuam for years and have yielded great results ranging from improved email services to reliable entitlement systems at the Department of Public Health and Social Services. Special mention goes out to Sen. Tina Muna-Barnes for proposing a free, cloud-based system that allows the community to report problems on their computers or on their mobile phones.
Shifting technology trends and financial pressures will determine the pace of GovGuam's transition to true e-Government, but it is slowly and steadily moving in the right direction. The good news is that it has a solid foundation to tweet about.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Jim Lacson
Quelle/Source: Guam Pacific Daily News, 07.11.2010
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