In my youth I devoured the Hardy Boy mysteries. While I occasionally bemoan my advancing years, I am glad my youth embraced the Hardy Boys before the old titles were updated, starting in 1959. The Frank and Joe Hardy of my youth had chums, rode in coupes, fought “swarthy foreigners,” or confronted mad scientists who put promising technologies to questionable ends. This was particularly true of electricity. As the country celebrated the growing number of laborsaving devices powered by electricity, Frank and Joe risked life and limb confronting darker applications of this force.
The early Hardy Boy books are a wonderful example of our fascination with the promise of technology. Even in the hands of villains, technologies such as those applied to electricity held limitless possibilities.
More often than not their wired opponents were once decent men (I don’t recall women villains) who became deranged by tragedy or injury. I am sure many of us remember the bewhiskered Eben Adar from The Disappearing Floor (1940) who invented furniture that glowed and automatically turned off when you slept and who grew plants electrically (he is also memorable for having a soft spot for the Boys’ formidable Aunt Gertrude). As these inventions suggest Eben wasn’t really a bad guy; he wanted to use technology to improve society. Alas a temporary mental disarrangement left him the pawn of a gang of thieves.
The early Hardy Boy books are a wonderful example of our fascination with the promise of technology. Even in the hands of villains, technologies such as those applied to electricity held limitless possibilities.
What occasioned these thoughts was reading H. 792, the bill seeking to implement many of the Challenges for Change recommendations for making government more efficient and effective. The number of times “electronic” or “electronically” appear in the bill would have made Eben Adar proud. It is a sign that our faith in technology is undiminished; information technology will surely lead us to the promise of improved services for less money.
“But wait,” says your inner Hardy Boy, “haven’t we been spending millions on information technology for decades? Shouldn’t we already be effective and efficient?” That sounds like a mystery.
Still, the mystery (let’s call it the Case of the Missing Efficiencies) remains. If IT is the solution to inefficiency, after spending hundreds of millions on computer systems over the years shouldn’t we be pretty darned efficient by now?
Despite having once read the Hardy Boys’ Detective Handbook (1959) my initial sleuthing on IT costs was not up to Frank and Joe’s standard. I did call on a couple of chums (to protect their identities let’s call them Chet Morton and Biff Hooper) who provided two different sets of figures. Chet, for example, used the 2007 report on Charting the Course Toward Vermont State Government’s Information Technology Future which identified $36,513,185 in IT expenditures in Fiscal Year 2005. Biff, however, looked at agency budgets and reported $4,558,981 in IT expenditures in FY 05. I suspect the difference might be because Biff looked at the Department of Information and Innovation’s (DII) budget, not at broader IT investments and maintenance expenditures, but in truth I remain clueless.
Still, the mystery (let’s call it the Case of the Missing Efficiencies) remains. If IT is the solution to inefficiency, after spending hundreds of millions on computer systems over the years shouldn’t we be pretty darned efficient by now?
One clue is the complex inter-relationships among government agencies and departments. An obvious example is the interplay among the judiciary, law enforcement, corrections, and social services. If the workflow among these distinct entities is not understood or IT “solutions” are employed only within one unit, then efficiencies not only won’t be found, but new inefficiencies might be created. Our record analysts, for example, found one
agency hand-entering data into its computer system – data that is created in a system maintained by another agency. Because the two systems are not compatible, the information is transmitted on paper by a fax machine on a weekly basis. This is not, alas, an isolated event. Our agencies often find themselves replicating data and working around technological inefficiencies caused by inadequate or narrow planning.
Examples of weak or non-existent coordination among agencies are diminishing but still abound. Without communication, much less coordination, overlapping functions; cross-agency but connected business processes; and related (and occasionally conflicting) legal requirements cannot be understood.
Examples of weak or non-existent coordination among agencies are diminishing but still abound. Without communication, much less coordination, overlapping functions; cross-agency but connected business processes; and related (and occasionally conflicting) legal requirements cannot be understood. Treating each agency’s, department’s, or division’s business requirements and technology needs in isolation is one reason the broader efficiencies envisioned in Challenges for Change have not already been realized through information technology.
There are, however, clues for a better outcome this time. DII is encouraging agencies to use enterprise-wide technologies and processes to support, among other things, inter- and intra-agency collaboration. Enterprise systems by themselves won’t create cooperation or coordination, but DII’s Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO) is assisting agencies with professional project managers to make sure projects are well designed and business requirements are well understood. Since EPMO works across government it can identify where business requirements overlap. We, the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration (VSARA), also have an enterprise view and, among other things, help agencies match legal requirements to recordkeeping requirements. Again this creates a broader view that can support greater effectiveness by coordinating responses to common legal mandates (agencies confront myriad complex, shifting, uncoordinated, and overlapping laws and rules in establishing their programs and recordkeeping systems).
EPMO and VSARA maintain an informal collaboration known as Information Strategies: Taskforce on Archives, Records, and Technology (iSTART) that allows them to exchange their business, project and record analyses. Where appropriate, iSTART also develops guidelines on everything from record formats, to scanning to metadata and electronic signatures; go to: http://vermont-archives.org/records/iSTART/.
Creating a new culture that values effective information management and cross-agency communication and coordination takes time. How to accomplish that against tight deadlines driven by a financial crisis is a mystery we must solve; otherwise the case of the missing efficiencies will never be cracked
