| As the tragedy of 9/11 made clear, the lack of connectivity and information sharing across government agencies were factors that impeded a more rapid response to the events of that day. The inability to share information is a problem for all governments from the federal level down to state, county, city, and town levels and stems from the way in which government information technology programs are funded. "All funding takes place on an agency-by-agency basis and has led to the creation of operational 'silos,'" according to Steve Quinn, CIO of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. However, changing this approach to reflect a broader scope is not simple. "We're talking about changing the whole fundamental culture on how budgets have been done for years and years and years, and that is a very difficult and slow process to change. But if we don't change it, we won't change the silo effect," continues Quinn. Indeed, the "silo effect" is the essence of the intelligence problem pre-9/11. In an odd way, Quinn is hopeful that in financially tight times, less state income resulting from lower tax income coupled with higher expenses due to inflation will force governments to do more sharing, if only to save costs. Innovation is often driven by financial challenges, and where those challenges align throughout governmental levels and agencies, collaboration and project sharing could lead to better information sharing in the long run. The question is whether government officials will continue in their old established ways of budgeting or see the value of collaborationuncomfortable as that might be. Lessons from the Insurance Industry The insurance industry has a similar information-sharing problem. The CIO of Safety Insurance, Dan Loranger, has had an interesting history as an IT administrator for large organizations across many different industries. Loranger started during the pre-deregulation days of the airline industry at a time when the spirit of cooperation (or should we say "coopetition") was vastly different from what it is today. "The airlines worked together. They would swap pilots and even aircraft when needed and, of course, allow each other's tickets," describes Loranger. "They wanted to share computer technology as welleven among competitors. Their healthy attitude was, 'If we're going to survive, we need to all help each other.'" Loranger was part of the early team that installed the Saabre reservation systema sophisticated reservation system that was developed by one airline and then opened up for use by all the others to share. The value of information sharing became obvious to all involved. Loranger contrasts this with the insurance industry. "The insurance industry has been far too fat for too long," starts Loranger, "and any inefficiencies were easily dealt with simply by raising rates or investments. The insurance industry has never really been in tough times that would force them to have to focus in deeply on the back-end IT side. The IT budget is quite small in comparison overall to revenue income. Any proposal to lower back-end costs was ignored. The insurance industry is driven by money-making plays not cost-saving back-end optimizations." However, Loranger was not stymied in his desire to bring information sharing to the insurance industry. He saw the value the Saabre system brought to airlines and he had a vision for a similar back-end management system for insurance carriers. As times became a little more competitive, during one year that it was difficult to simply "depend on rate increases" Loranger pioneered the first true "connected" insurance business. Prior to his initiative, each agency of a carrier ran their business much like a silonot connected to the carrier in any direct way and still very much dependent on phone and postal mail. "In the 1960s, American Airlines was online and productive. In the 1990s and early 2000, insurance agents are still using phone, paper, and mail as their primary communication tools. It was really ridiculous and ripe for a change," states Loranger. |
State government needs a few pioneers. Now that funding is tighter and a new focus is on both IT costs and interagency cooperation, the ground is fertile for new approaches. Perhaps the open-source movement holds the key. According to Steve Quinn: We are deeply committed to open standards and open source. This is our best hope going forward for avoiding a repeat of the problems of an aging employee population and legacy software code. Open source has got traction in government; this could absolutely be revolutionary in terms of how software gets built and licensed. It is a different business paradigm. We donate code that we build and various companies become subject-matter experts in a certain area of government. The government is vast, and the opportunities for collaboration are enormous. State governments are beginning to use information technology in novel ways, and we are headed toward "virtual" collaboration of multistate IT operations. Sharing data, software, and application-development practices is an important first step toward leveraging staff and resources among state agencies. Cost-reduction efforts, and data sharing and connectivity options now offered by the open-source movement, will further drive the connectivity of state and local governments. Breaking down information silos and sharing data to realize new efficiencies and discoveries are goals that are consistent with our Inescapable Data vision; furthermore, the values realized are basically the same for businesses as they are for governments. The problem of governmental information sharing has been well publicized and may represent significant opportunities for commercial businesses to eventually participate in the vast shared-information space currently under construction. |
