Since when we have launched the concept of smart government I have noticed that there are some government clients, some technology providers and even some of my own colleagues who do not seem to grasp the importance and nuances of this concept.
This is mostly due to the connotation of the term “smart”, which has been often associated to substantives like “city”, “planet”, “community” and – indeed – “government”. The term usually refers to how urban or regional areas could become much more successful at achieving sustainability and economic development objectives by deploying and leveraging a mixture of infrastructure (including sensor-based networks), data exchange and analytics, and applications that would allow a multiplicity of different systems to be seen and coordinated as a whole.
So when you look at some of the “smart city” examples around the world, you often see one or several diagrams illustrating the interconnection and interaction between usually distinct systems overseeing public safety, traffic management, energy distribution, budgeting, resource management and so forth. Smart has become a synonym of collaboration between different domains, and usually implies the use of real-time operational technologies alongside more traditional information technology.
Smart government is not this. Smart government is about pursuing sustainable public value by tackling one or several processes that cut across distinct domains or jurisdictions, and doing so in an affordable and evolutionary way.
Smart government approaches can be used – indeed – to wisely develop a sustainable smart city initiative. But they can be equally used to develop a cost-effective channel strategy, to more successfully pursue a shared service initiative, to join up data and applications in a specific domain (such as health care or public safety) across different tiers of government.
Smart government is not about lavish spending, long term goals, and science-fiction movies. It is about how to face the harsh reality of tighter budgets, uncertain political and economic environment, changing societal needs, how to keep providing statutory services and still remain capable of innovation.
Smart government implies changes to the way government departments and agencies relate to constituents and other stakeholders, the way they manage and leverage their workforce, the way they do strategic planning, utilize enterprise architecture, perform portfolio management, source their IT services, and how they shape the role of their own IT organizations.
Smart government is a quiet revolution in the way governments use IT, pushed by budget constraints, the need for agility and a state of uncertainty as the new normal. It does challenge a lot of the common wisdom that has been accumulated over decades of public sector IT spending, and it is unlikely to be welcome for those who have thrived in the “old normal”, be they government executives, consultants or external service providers.
Maybe this is why some people do not seem to get it. It is not because they don’t understand it. It is because they are afraid of its consequences.
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4 Comments
Yes, I believe that some people will be afraid of “smart government” for the reasons you suggest. Even more, unfortunately, will be turned away from the concept because of the vagueness of the concept. That you have to continually define the concept reminds me of how “web 2.0” evolved as a bag of concepts over time. Sometimes it referred to technology, sometimes to behavior, sometimes to culture. The result: fragmentation of effort and acceptance. The same is true here. You just need to be specific.
“Maybe this is why some people do not seem to get it. It is not because they don’t understand it. It is because they are afraid of its consequences”.
I Fully agreee. Government Employees and technology providers considered themself as THE MAIN stakeholders. Citizen are just “providers of resources”, and not the final stakeholders.
So, from the Government Employees pojnt of view, “smartness” is an unneccessary additional constraint. To be avoided.
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@Donald – Well, if smart government follows the same fate as web 2.0, it is not too bad. You are right, different people saw different things in it, but it is actually leading to significant changes.
It would be useful if you could be more specific about the vagueness. In our definition it is an administration that
1. applies and integrates information, communication and operational technologies
2. to planning, management and operations
3. ACROSS multiple domains, process areas or jurisdictions
4. to generate SUSTAINABLE public value.
So it is not about specific technologies, but about how they are applied and integrated having in mind sustainability (i.e. can we keep running this 3, 5, 10 years from now?) and the crossing of at least one boundary between government silos
@Paolo – I would rather turn your perspective on its head. Governments have been deploying technology for over a decade aiming at improving their citizen-centricity. Sometimes they have succeeded and sometimes they have not, but it is undeniable that you cannot indefinitely improve citizen service by just strengthening self-service. When it comes to complex case management, to areas like health and human services, to investigations, and so forth, you have to put the employee at the center of your technology effort. If today employees feel they are the main stakeholders is because governments have underinvested in empowering them with technologies and processes that make them part of the decision-making process. Employees are expected to produce a certain outcome by adhering to a certain procedure, and the way they are measures is not how good was the outcome, but how much output they produced (e.g. processed forms vs case solved) or – even worse – how much input they have provided.
Case in point is Italy, where the current Minister of Public Service has invested money and political capital in controlling the input, but close to nothing to improve the outcome.
As soon as you start taking a different approach, empowering employees to solve problems – of course within policy and accountability boundaries – in different ways, the impact on productivity, employee as well as citizen satisfaction is tangible. Unfortunately this tends to happen when there is a crisis or a budget constraints that make the traditional way of working impossible or impractical. Smart governments are those that will put their employees at the center of the innovation process not by accident, but as part of their normal course of business.