Memo to Mayor Adrian Fenty, Washington, DC City Government (Final Version)

Elected officials are often re-elected on their ability to avoid economic vicious cycles and create virtuous cycles. In the coming years, IT is going to play a major role for cities that wish to reinforce their virtuous circles of growth. Governments are going to have to become even more open while protecting privacy, increasing security, and facilitating business. All this will have to happen in the mist of cutting costs and reducing the overall burden of government.

Mr. Mayor, your next CTO should be someone who not only manages IT for the city government, but also helps set strategic priorities and implement organizational change for all departments. The next wave of IT for the city is not simple re-engineering the way groups of people do business, it will be about re-engineering the way the entire city government works.

Even the General Service Administration has recognized the intersection of IT and strategic priorities. In a recent report they argued that the country needs to: 1) create an open technology environment, 2) treat data as a national asset, and 3) foster a culture and framework for collaboration.


Swimming in Data

Cities collect massive amounts of data on their citizens and businesses. However, today much of this information remains in data silos, inaccessible to other government entities and the public at large. As both bandwidth and processing power increase, the ability to send much of this data over networks is getting easier.

Once upon a time, cutting edge things like posting land records and ordering duplicate drivers licenses online are now par for the course. Today's cutting edge cities are using this power to streamline complex approval processes, like the city of Brampton has done. Some governments are even employing agile methods to reduce the time to design and deliver. The sheer scale increases in processing power and network bandwidth are opening more and more doors. This will allow cities to set up more one-stop-shops, interact with citizens more online, and reduce frustrations and runarounds. In fact, Consolidation and Shared services are the top two priorities for state CIOs today.

Mashups represent one way of sharing and consolidating services. Mashups publish data and allow the community to create links between data as it suits their needs. Mashups are fast, flexible and provide rich information. Yet, they require a lot of granularity. Many powerful ideas came out of DC's own mashup contest. Imagine how much more could be accomplished if more data were made available.

Yet, mashups require some way of linking two pieces of information, so when it comes to individual people red flags go up. For a time, social security numbers were a de-facto national ID number that could be used to link data on individuals. Civil libertarians are concerned about the idea of a centralized ID number, in light of identity theft and the possibility that other sensitive information about a person could be released. Today the Federal government is revisiting the Federal ID mandate due in part to lack of funding and concerns from civil libertarians. Even still, governments need to find ways to make their databases interoperable while addressing privacy concerns.

Concerns surrounding privacy and security are justifiable and the mayor and CTO are going to have to work together to help define comprehensive rules. It seems that no data is truly safe in light of recent hackers' success in breaching pentagon war planes. Yet almost all records that the government maintains today are digitized in disparate databases. Keeping such information in a less-structured format does not make it more secure. In fact most of it is probably less secure than if it were subject to a comprehensive set of security rules.

So, is it important enough to risk political capital and wade into a morass of privacy issues? Yes. DC has a choice, it can help shape public issue life-cycle or it can wait and have a set of rules thrust upon it once the federal government and other states have set them. Many people have already begun to search for ways of both meeting privacy concerns and publishing valuable information. This isn't just a technology issue, it is a political issue that requires heavy involvement of the political establishment.

The next CTO should establish a working group to outline comprehensive guidelines for working with confidential records. Such a group should include some of the civil libertarians who are opposed to the creation of a national ID, elected officials, and of course technologists. The group will work to ensure that only the right people have access to confidential information.

Once government databases can talk to each other more effectively, governments can aggregate data, make it anonymous, and publish it for study. Civil society can help answer some of the most pressing questions and in some cases, using data that spans decades: How can we reduce the amount of government services a person will need over their lifetime? What predictive factors are there for certain undesirable activities such as crime, bankruptcy or even chronic diseases? We have much of this information today, but it isn't accessible. By studying such data we can contribute to a virtuous cycle by finding better ways of investing in people, developing their self sufficiency, and preventing some from ever falling ill. Otherwise, we will remain behind the curve, doling out cash when people get sick, wind up bankrupt or worse, after a crime has been committed.

Cities will also be able to build better predictive economic models. How much can we expect to collect in taxes from an individual (NPV of a taxpayer)? What programs will increase that person’s earning-power? If economic growth decreases, how much money will the city need to cope with increases in support payments such as unemployment and welfare? Which individuals are more likely to lose their jobs? Which individuals are more likely to lose their homes? What can be done to help them in advance? What neighborhoods are more likely to see an increase in crime?

We are just scratching the surface of such questions today. Having the answers to these questions represents a shift from reactive government to proactive government. And as we begun this post, governments that can be proactive will be able to support virtuous economic cycles. It will also allow government to help people to help other people.

Shared Services

Because the value of physical and social networks is high (proportional to the square of the number of participants) cities must not overlook the power of their own residents. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter may be a powerful tool to reshape the culture of cities and drive the decisions of business and social services.

Today, the District government relies on third-party organizations to supply services such as education, drug treatment and mental health. In the future, cities will be able to facilitate peer to peer networks to increase the quality of support and decrease the burden on government coffers. For example, Chicago uses a peer to peer network to monitor elderly during inclement weather. Similar efforts are in use to help those living with certain diseases, mental health illnesses, survivors of violent crimes and so forth.

Social networks also help industries to congregate, just as many pharmaceuticals have recently relocated around New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It isn’t enough today to make an attempt to attract knowledge workers, all cities are making similar attempts. The District must target specific knowledge workers who can benefit from being closer to people with similar interests and work experience, as well as being integrated into DC’s current fabric of workers.

Social networking is also being used by law enforcement to publicize the activities of criminals and monitor the activities of high-school children. Police and neighborhood activists can coordinate to increase the amount of information on neighborhood crimes while limiting access to appropriate levels. This requires close coordination in addition to the ability to maintain confidential records.

Given the increasing prominence of social networking, perhaps the government should investigate the possibility of building an open-source government social networking platform to get more value out of the data in current silos. Then, just like Facebook, developers could write miniature applications to enhance performance. Such a system would undoubtedly prove more reliable and more comprehensive way of organization information than many of the methods we use today.

Change Management

Earlier we discussed how state CIO priorities are consolidation and shared services. This is going to require government agencies to open up even more than before. Resistance to change, especially sweeping changes, is often enough to derail such an undertaking. It isn't simply the technology of change that will be daunting; it is the internal politics of change too. Undoubtedly, workers will feel that their jobs and livelihood will be threatened, in some cases rightly and in some cases not.

To counter this resistance, the Mayor and CTO will need to coordinate closely. The next CTO is going to have to be skilled at establishing a vision for non-IT staff, negotiating with key agents, and building a guiding coalition. The District is going to need to step up spending on retraining staff for new roles. The greatest issues facing the CTO stem from the politics that have arisen because of the technology available today. If the CTO sees his role as battling civil libertarians then he will be doomed to failure. The CTO will need to see himself as a coalition builder who can lead a fractured group uncertain of its own destination.

Final Thoughts

Mr. Mayor, I hope this post has been useful for you. I've included a lot of links to relevant articles.

I hope that when you select your next CTO, you will choose someone who has the soft skills to succeed in addition to the technical skills. The next CTO will need your support to set strategic priorities and implement organizational change for all departments. You should work closely with the CTO to create groups that can tackle divisive issues such as a universal ID number. Remember, the next wave of IT for the city is not simple re-engineering the way groups of people do business, it will be about re-engineering the way the entire city government works.

PS, the posting below was for class discussion.