Modenization Caper
It’s like a bad movie that seems to get replayed in every city, state, or federal government.  It starts with strategic intent and political bravado that turns to a feeling of malaise.  That uneasiness that accompanies you when you know things aren’t just right.

For me it has always been that technology just can’t deliver the goods promised.  No matter what the industry I have worked in doing consulting work the mantra remains the same.  We can automate it, there’s way too much paper or manual processing. 

Seems plausible to anyone seeking to modernize the work that is being done.  If you are in government management you know that is where the money comes from to modernize via the use of technology.  After all, this is what public sector innovation is all about.

Yet, this is the great technology caper.  We spend millions to modernize and yet services continue to become more expensive and provide us with worse service.  The hype just doesn’t live up to the value.

The issue is not technology in and of itself, but the fact it is not the biggest lever for improvement.  The design and management of work is our opportunity.  Government management has pieced together a system comprised of front/back offices, redundancy, handoffs, queues, multiple sorts and other bad designs that don’t need to be automated, but redesigned.  Technology just locks in the waste if the system isn’t designed well.

But that is not the end of the story as just redesigning systems isn’t enough.  We must rethink the management of the work and the way we increase complexity to inspect in quality rather than fix the problem or put in targets that create sub-optimization and waste.  It doesn’t stop there either . . . mandates, legislation and other mis-guided efforts have led to a financial infrastructure that our US tax base is unwilling to continue to bear the weight.

The great modernization caper has to include a willing participant or at least an ignorant one.  As grasping at straw men like shared services, automation and outsourcing is certainly better than doing nothing (which it is not).  Attractive ideas that really have no way of helping.

As we enter this age of provisioning services with less and less “revenue” from the taxpayer base.  We are in need of better thinking about how these services are delivered.  Let’s just not get carried away with the technology.

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Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at info@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.