The e in e-Government

E-government traditionally refers to the delivery of government information and services online. The web presents governments with cost effective ways to reach out to the public and governments at all levels have placed a wide range of materials on the web from publications to databases. But e-government offers governments the opportunity to listen as well as to speak. I would argue that the full potential of e-government will only truly be realized when the ‘e’ in e-Government stands for ‘engagement’ rather than ‘electronic’.

Email allows citizens to interact with government officials or request information or services. While email is certainly the easiest method of contact, there are other methods that government websites can employ to listen to the public. These include areas to post comments, the use of message boards, and chat rooms. Websites using these features would allow citizens and department members alike to read and respond to others’ comments regarding issues. Survey tools, polls and petitions could be used as could blogs and Wikis.

Citizens bring diverse perspectives and experiences to e-government, and government would benefit from citizen suggestions, complaints, and feedback. Even a simple feature such as a comment form empowers citizens and gives them a voice.

Business has learned to leverage electronic services to create new paradigms with its customers. Self-Service, online order entry and online support are all examples of business shedding expenses in exchange for putting consumer’s in control. Experience from e-businesses shows that the identification of customer needs is an iterative process involving interactions of various forms. Government must learn to do the same and the next wave of e-government must move towards building engagement with the public so that the public use services through new channels, not because they save the government money but because they are more efficient and effective.

The debate over web personalization vs privacy will continue for the foreseeable future. Technology, and the ability to target and respond to an individual’s needs clashes with the individuals right to forbid others from getting too much information about their behavior. Privacy advocates will continue to raise concerns about the use of technologies but once we solve the problem let’s hope that technology will be used to encourage participatiion by citizens rather than simply make existing processes faster or worse spread existing poor ones.

 

Devide and be Conquered

In the beginning life was simple: there were Analysts and Developers. Analysts acted as Project Managers if they needed to and Developers provided what administration was needed (system, network, database). What little administration was required was done in a timely manner, in response to the needs of the project. At some point in time a trend towards specialization took over. Suddenly we need Network Administration, Server Administration, Security Administration, Storage Administration, Backup Administration, Database Administration, Deployment Administration and of course the glue that holds it all together Administration Administrators. Today many IT directors in a large corporations are surrounded by an entourage of software administrators all working hard to make them as paranoid as possible about needing their skills.

This fragmentation has had some seriously negative consequences including increased communication, more dependencies, decreased agility, more staff and the ever popular process, procedure and paperwork.

The cost of supporting all these administrative roles has exploded. The upside is that it has created management roles for many. The downside is that it slows project progress. On a daily basis I hear developers cry some form of “WTF” or “I can’t believe this…”.

My view of Database Administrators is polarized. More so than ever before I view databases as an integral part of an automated system. DBAs who understand the details of the database engines and are willing to participate in developing a system are worth their weight in gold. They are in essence developers and an integral part of a development team.

However, there is a special breed of DBAs who have blossomed in large corporations who don’t understand this role. Their authority comes from owning database permissions. They frown at the thought of creating or altering a table. Try “evolving” a physical database design in some organizations. How can you experiment when every change must be justified to a DBA who then will have you wait while they reluctantly schedule the change for you. 

Much of the large corporation inefficiency in software development comes from administrators who have been given too much power, and often take up adversarial positions against development teams.  This isn’t something that can be fixed easily because there’s often a deeply rooted culture of control and change prevention.

It’s no wonder that so many large corporations outsource their major projects.