World's first "crowd sourced" public policy initiative
Friday 22 February 2013
Manitoba United is not afraid of Technical Change - We embrace the opportunity to be more Engaged and Efficient and Effective.
Government has been old and stodgy when it comes to better technology for service delivery. We have to get with the rest of the world that expects more and better for less.
Almost every business uses technology of some type. Every good and growing business strives to get more out of technology than their competitors. Why is it then that government is so slow to adopt money saving and user friendly equipment or software?
It is not that government is completely stupid. They were one of the first groups to grab up the blackberry system. They used the technology so much many of them became called Crackberries. Right here in Manitoba there used to be a political blog called Blackberry Addicts. The problem with that technology is that it was confined to and strictly for political purposes and for the benefit of the administration and political leaders. It had nothing to do service delivery for clients and only served to keep the leaders ahead of the nosy press and public. Just imagine for a second what good things could happen if we would just employ a little technology to help the folks on the ground.
Manitoba United will not be afraid to try various kinds of technology to offer easier engagement and to improve the government’s response to the citizens.
The two areas that would benefit most from technology are health care and education. Several other policy initiatives address specific ideas within those realms. Unfortunately many great technologies like tele-medicine which could deliver much needed in home help suffer from an archaic and impenetrable structural system set up years ago. The systems and bureaucracies that maintain them consort to defeat change. Today it would be almost impossible for a contract person to go out to an invalids home with lower cost tele-medicine technology and have the results monitored by a nurse practitioner. Even if this could be done the system has no method of accepting billing from such a service. As a result some expensive and intrusive efforts have to be made to bring the patient in either to a clinic or to wait long enough to warrant the Emergency Room. Since this is so difficult, it becomes deceptively easy to relegate that person to a very expensive full time care home to say nothing of whether or not it might be counter productive or against their wishes.
You could say very similar things about education. We have so much invested in bricks and mortar institutions that it is difficult to see the successes going on elsewhere where they do not have enough money to build such institutions. Our single source delivery through bloated teachers unions which refuse to recognize initiative or performance of individual teachers or the innovation of broader internet delivery I stifling us. It is unnecessarily cumbersome, expensive and old fashioned.
Manitoba United would like to see technology change….. preferably disruptive change but we are pragmatic. It won’t be easy and it won’t be fast. Unfortunately the resistance will be tremendous.
There are two things we can do to stimulate the process.
1) we can do more and larger pilots, particularly ones with different funding models, when we see something working elsewhere
2) we can agree to look after any personnel that are displaced by change in order to make it easier to adopt. A long time ago the Chairman of IBM said something like, “ We are going to move forward. We will carry the wounded but we will eject the dissenters”
Besides the main targets of health and education, we are aware of a number of other advances that might be useful as well. There is a system for matching volunteers, there are numerous systems of getting public input on proposals there are even newer digital methods of voting.
It has often been said that government does not do a good job attracting younger individuals. This should be no surprise as it regularly fails to use their language or their means of communication. Manitoba United does intend to move forward.
I was trying to find the verbatim IBM quote but thought readers might like this from Micheal Hammer the author of "Re-engineering the Corporation" He was talking in analogies but you will get the idea that transformational change does not come easily.
"In this journey we'll carry our wounded and shoot the dissenters.... I want to purge from the business vocabulary: like CEO, manager, worker, job." Forbes ASAP, Sept. 13, 1993
"It's basically taking an axe and a machine gun to your existing organization." Computerworld,Jan. 24, 1994
"What you do with the existing structure is nuke it!" Site Selection, February 1993 "Re-engineering must be initiated . . . by someone who has . . . enough status to break legs." Planning Review, May/June 1993
Almost every business uses technology of some type. Every good and growing business strives to get more out of technology than their competitors. Why is it then that government is so slow to adopt money saving and user friendly equipment or software?
ReplyDeleteIt is not that government is completely stupid. They were one of the first groups to grab up the blackberry system. They used the technology so much many of them became called Crackberries. Right here in Manitoba there used to be a political blog called Blackberry Addicts. The problem with that technology is that it was confined to and strictly for political purposes and for the benefit of the administration and political leaders. It had nothing to do service delivery for clients and only served to keep the leaders ahead of the nosy press and public. Just imagine for a second what good things could happen if we would just employ a little technology to help the folks on the ground.
Manitoba United will not be afraid to try various kinds of technology to offer easier engagement and to improve the government’s response to the citizens.
The two areas that would benefit most from technology are health care and education. Several other policy initiatives address specific ideas within those realms. Unfortunately many great technologies like tele-medicine which could deliver much needed in home help suffer from an archaic and impenetrable structural system set up years ago. The systems and bureaucracies that maintain them consort to defeat change. Today it would be almost impossible for a contract person to go out to an invalids home with lower cost tele-medicine technology and have the results monitored by a nurse practitioner. Even if this could be done the system has no method of accepting billing from such a service. As a result some expensive and intrusive efforts have to be made to bring the patient in either to a clinic or to wait long enough to warrant the Emergency Room. Since this is so difficult, it becomes deceptively easy to relegate that person to a very expensive full time care home to say nothing of whether or not it might be counter productive or against their wishes.
You could say very similar things about education. We have so much invested in bricks and mortar institutions that it is difficult to see the successes going on elsewhere where they do not have enough money to build such institutions. Our single source delivery through bloated teachers unions which refuse to recognize initiative or performance of individual teachers or the innovation of broader internet delivery I stifling us. It is unnecessarily cumbersome, expensive and old fashioned.
Manitoba United would like to see technology change….. preferably disruptive change but we are pragmatic. It won’t be easy and it won’t be fast. Unfortunately the resistance will be tremendous.
There are two things we can do to stimulate the process.
1) we can do more and larger pilots, particularly ones with different funding models, when we see something working elsewhere
2) we can agree to look after any personnel that are displaced by change in order to make it easier to adopt. A long time ago the Chairman of IBM said something like, “ We are going to move forward. We will carry the wounded but we will eject the dissenters”
Besides the main targets of health and education, we are aware of a number of other advances that might be useful as well. There is a system for matching volunteers, there are numerous systems of getting public input on proposals there are even newer digital methods of voting.
It has often been said that government does not do a good job attracting younger individuals. This should be no surprise as it regularly fails to use their language or their means of communication. Manitoba United does intend to move forward.
I was trying to find the verbatim IBM quote but thought readers might like this from Micheal Hammer the author of "Re-engineering the Corporation" He was talking in analogies but you will get the idea that transformational change does not come easily.
ReplyDelete"In this journey we'll carry our wounded and shoot the dissenters.... I want to purge from the business vocabulary: like CEO, manager, worker, job." Forbes ASAP, Sept. 13, 1993
"It's basically taking an axe and a machine gun to your existing organization." Computerworld,Jan. 24, 1994
"What you do with the existing structure is nuke it!" Site Selection, February 1993
"Re-engineering must be initiated . . . by someone who has . . . enough status to break legs." Planning Review, May/June 1993