Mark P. McDonaldI am going out on a limb here, but we really appreciate your input on this issue.
Public sector technology is an essential and important part of our society, economy and technical landscape. Technology solutions from National, Regional, State and local governments define the ways in which people in interact with government to obtain services, information and support. These technologies are blurring the lines between public, private and personal. That is the context for this question.
When we ask public sector CIOs for their ideas and needs in designing Gartner events one thing comes up rather often – blend the event, public and private, we want to learn what private sector CIOs are doing, their practices etc. That is great. We listen and incorporate that input into the design of events like the recent Symposia and the upcoming CIO Leadership Forums. Here is the question.
When we bring private and public sector CIOs together on an issue, the immediate question raised by a public sector CIO is that the practice or approach discussed does not work in the public sector. Then the follow up question, tell me something that works in a public sector context.
The point is legitimate because the two are different. However, it defeats the purpose of bringing the two people together. It also has a chilling effect on group participation as one side tunes out – either private or public.
So here is the question – If you want to learn and share practices with your private sector peers, then how should we do it to avoid the immediate and constant roadblock of it does not work in public sector?
The easy answer is to hold separate sessions: public and private. But, public sector CIOs want a mix. I hope you see the paradox and I would really appreciate your input so we can meet your needs.
If there are other reasons why public sector CIOs want to network with their private counterparts, other than to share practices – then great please comment on what they are and we can design that experience appropriately.
I am asking this personal question of public sector CIOs because public sector information and the technologies they lead are critical elements of everyone’s safety and well being. Getting this issue right benefits everyone in the public and private sector. I would appreciate your help in understanding this issue.
Please comment and I will be happy to respond and let you all know some thoughts based on your comments for getting the best of each together.
Category: Personal Observation Tags: CIO, personal musing, symposium, Tools
5 responses so far ↓
1 Tweets that mention A personal question to public sector CIOs -- Topsy.com November 18, 2010 at 2:59 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mark P. McDonald, Jovi Umawing and Uptime Devices, Martin Howitt. Martin Howitt said: RT @markpmcdonald: A personal question to public sector CIOs http://bit.ly/bJClQ5 #egov, #gov20 Appreciate your insight [...]
2 AA November 19, 2010 at 9:45 pm
A great paradox of sorts; some forum sessions could have expectations managed better, and explicitly state the purpose is to share information across sectors, and build analogies where scenarios might be applicable. There is much to gain for both public and private sector CIOs (having been both), removing personal bias is the first step, and then keep an open mind to possibilities. Both sides have like challenges, we just call it something different and blame the language and definitions as roadblocks. Continue to bridge sessions with both sectors and drive creativity and innovative thinking.
3 Rob Schneider November 20, 2010 at 12:57 pm
An excellent question Mark, let me give you my two cents worth.
I share the frustrations. I often feel like I’ve wasted my time when I attend sessions with a private sector focus. For example, I don’t care about how I can increase sales by using Twitter. I care about how I can better serve my citizens using Twitter. Same tool, different objective. And of course there is overlap – both the private and public sectors care about customer service, and a session on that would be useful to both.
And to complicate things I find I can learn a lot from private sector CIOs. Just because they have a different objective doesn’t mean they don’t have the same headaches and solutions. It’s probably correct to say that we are 60% the same, and 40% different.
So how do you turn that into a successful event? None of these are the “right” answer, there are different situations and different ways to respond to those situations.
Solution !) Streams – when you have a CIO event set up private and public sector streams. We can choose which particular stream interests us the most and cross-over if there is something on the other stream that is particularly interesting. And don’t forget the lunches and keynotes – they let us mix – but make sure the keynotes will be of interest to both.
Solution 2) Tailor to the location – When you are planning an event, consider the location. If it is in a provincial or state capital anticipate a large number of public sector CIOs and adjust the agenda accordingly. When 90% of the audience is public sector the value of a session on salesforce.com is debatable. A session on Gov 2.0 or Open Data would be a hit. Vancouver vs. Victoria, Calgary vs. Edmonton, Toronto vs. Ottawa. The audiences will reflect their private/public sector roots.
Solution 3) Address the difference in the presentations themselves – A presentation at an event can address both audiences with a little bit of forethought. Just ask the presenters to think about how they can address the needs of both types of CIOs as part of their presentations. The presenter can say things like “If increasing sales is your objective you can find value by blah, blah, blah, and if you are citizen-centric you will find value by blah, blah, blah.
Solution 4) Two events – Have two events over the course of a year – one general with a private sector focus, and one focused on public sector imperatives. The public sector CIO will probably attend both so that they can get that private sector explosure yet still the public sector focus they need. These events don’t have to be in the same town, but should be in the same state or province for travel approval reasons. And of course the public sector one should be held in the capital city.
Hopefully that will give you some ideas. And if you can solve this one, please move on to another big problem – organization size. As much as there are issues with private/public sector topics I have problems attending events focusing on large enterprise organizations when I’m managing a team of less than 50!
- Rob
4 Mark McDonald November 23, 2010 at 8:35 am
Rob
Thank you for your comprehensive response and it has given me much to think about as we look to bring the best of public and private sector IT together.
Welcome other comments as well.
Thanks
mark
5 Tony Riding December 12, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Hi Mark
I think your question is rather simplistic and depends on so many factors:
1. It is not just a public sector v private sector clash. I’m sure different industries could make the same point. For example, would a low cost manufacturing organisation use all the case studies from the banking sector? We should forget about the public/private sector issues. Yes there are some underlying factors like budget cycles and value propositions, but fundamentally, you can learn from any sector and any type of organisation. It just depends if their business model pattern is similar to ones own and, therefore, can we learn from their operations and structures? Dave Aron in his presentation Disruptive and Proven? Innovate using business model analogies describes how an organisation can find analogies in other industries where IT and information have created breakthrough innovation”.
2. The issue is not just the public sector saying no can do. “That would never work in our authority” is a familiar comment in response to a council case study at purely public sector events. Different organisational cultures often dictate the nature of innovation.
3. Numerous technical solutions are completely transferable. Virtualisation being a case in point. Deployment of Windows, perhaps, is slightly different, as one might describe the private sector as predominantly type A or type B organisations, ready to embrace change sooner, while local government is predominantly type B or type C orgs, slower to embrace change. Government security issues can also produce different constraints.
4. On the softer side, organisational culture and local governments aversion to risk, is a significant factor and probably the biggest challenge. A recent survey of 20 local authorities indicated all authorities had “excellent” risk management processes in place. However, their interpretation of excellent meant their processes removed all risk from projects. In other words they were predominantly risk averse. Up until this year I would have said that attitude to risk was a significant difference between public and private sectors but the public sector culture is changing quite quickly. The fact that this year Gartner has introduced much more on managing risk, suggests it is also a problem in the private sector.
5. Public and private sector economic cycles are often out of sync. Two years ago there was still some growth in the public sector IT when the private sector was going thru considerable cut backs. Private sector organisations are now developing solutions for growth, rather than local government which has budget cuts of between 20-40%. Yes authorities still need to innovate but public sector organisations will not be preparing for growth for a long time to come.
6. It is not all negative either, in terms of performance, our substantial public sector benchmarking indicates local government does IT 20% cheaper than the private sector.
Hopefully this explanation of some of the differences may help. In more specific terms:
1. Get a better understanding of what happens in the public sector (Analysts understanding of the public sector is demonstrated in numerous one on ones with analysts comments such as “well I don’t know what happens in the public sector but here is a private sector example”).
2. Promote the business model/analogies approach outline by Dave Aron.
3. Weave public sector best practice into your presentations.
Hope this helps
We would be happy to discuss this with you in more detail.
Tony
On behalf of the Socitm Insight team
Socitm (the Society of IT Management represents CIOs in the public sector in the UK) has a team of analysts at Symposium each year to collect and translate the various topics for our CIO subscribers back home.
Leave a Comment