Mr Richards on technology, information, and people
RuminatingMar 6, 2010
Innovating from the inside
Federal CIO Vivek Kundra recently delivered a speech to the University of Washington's (Seattle) Evans School of Public Affairs.
"When Kundra came to the job from his previous position as CIO for the District of Columbia, he discovered that the rule for giving government employees BlackBerry devices was based on the number of years they had worked in the government. "That's a perverse incentive," he noted. Instead, it would be more appropriate to dole out the phones based on the worker's role in the government and their need to access information, he said."
This is an interesting point that touches upon the government's penchant for selecting and promoting based on seniority. Most promotion decisions are based on the number of years worked rather than on an employee's merit. This may be influenced by the highly unionized labor environment in the public sector, which typically values years of service over employee capability. I would set aside claims of "ageism" for another post.
But once an organization sets precedent that promotions will be due to years of service rather than accomplishment, this takes away motivation for individual employees to work hard and smartly. Rather, they are rewarded for taking cues from their management and following normal procedure. Where is the incentive for innovation?
This would require a radical overhaul of government organization. But it would provide rewards and motivation for federal employees to innovate from the inside. And a small aside..
"The government has also been examining its deployment of data centers. In the past several years, it has increased the number of data centers from 432 to more than 1,100, even as most private-sector companies are drastically reducing the number of data centers they run. "It takes away the energy and focus on what CIOs should be doing, which is, 'How do we serve you better rather than building another data center?'" he said."
This is a bit of a misnomer I'd think - the federal government probably has more restrictions about where its data resides than does Amazon.com. Whereas Amazon can reduce its domestic data center by outsourcing to a cheap off-shore entity, the government requires U.S. citizens on U.S. soil to watch over its data.
"When Kundra came to the job from his previous position as CIO for the District of Columbia, he discovered that the rule for giving government employees BlackBerry devices was based on the number of years they had worked in the government. "That's a perverse incentive," he noted. Instead, it would be more appropriate to dole out the phones based on the worker's role in the government and their need to access information, he said."
This is an interesting point that touches upon the government's penchant for selecting and promoting based on seniority. Most promotion decisions are based on the number of years worked rather than on an employee's merit. This may be influenced by the highly unionized labor environment in the public sector, which typically values years of service over employee capability. I would set aside claims of "ageism" for another post.
But once an organization sets precedent that promotions will be due to years of service rather than accomplishment, this takes away motivation for individual employees to work hard and smartly. Rather, they are rewarded for taking cues from their management and following normal procedure. Where is the incentive for innovation?
This would require a radical overhaul of government organization. But it would provide rewards and motivation for federal employees to innovate from the inside. And a small aside..
"The government has also been examining its deployment of data centers. In the past several years, it has increased the number of data centers from 432 to more than 1,100, even as most private-sector companies are drastically reducing the number of data centers they run. "It takes away the energy and focus on what CIOs should be doing, which is, 'How do we serve you better rather than building another data center?'" he said."
This is a bit of a misnomer I'd think - the federal government probably has more restrictions about where its data resides than does Amazon.com. Whereas Amazon can reduce its domestic data center by outsourcing to a cheap off-shore entity, the government requires U.S. citizens on U.S. soil to watch over its data.
Labels: gov 2.0
posted by Phil # 9:47 AM 
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