Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yewenyi

I based the title for this post on an old joke (not very funny I’ll admit) that we used to ‘crack’ back in the old days when I was working at ICL. It was a take on corporate citizenship whereby everyone was expected to consider the good of the company before the good of their own business unit.

A manager would say something along the lines of “Guy’s, there’s only one ICL” and the response would be “yes, there’s one over here, one over there and another one over there”. And then, when we’d staunched the flow of blood from our split sides, we’d get up from rolling around the floor, congratulate ourselves for our superlative wit and get on with the meeting.

After nine happy years at ICL, I moved to Oracle for another nine happy years but never had the chance to crack the joke – ‘cooperation’ was the way of doing things.

Then I moved to EMC and I chuckled to myself the first time that I heard ‘One EMC’ mentioned although no-one understood why!!

Anyway, back to the plot…

In EMC, we are very engaged with Federal Governments around the globe as departments and agencies struggle to cope with the massive number of citizen requests that they receive. Frustration is high with Governments whose systems are not architected to provide a single view of the citizen and the processes are creaking.

But as Spock said in ‘The Undiscovered Country’, (or was it Francois Rabelais?) “Nature abhors a vacuum”.

Take the case of the recent Australian floods, many people lost everything (homes, furniture, personal belongings and more) but there are also other losses that are not considered at the time e.g. personal identification documentation. (more…)

birth certificates · centralised management · citizen services · climate change · crisis · Documentum · floods · FOI · Freedom of information · Government · La Nina · personal identification · repository · Spock · terrorism · xCP

In 1940, Alcoa coined the term Imagineering to describe the process of letting your imagination soar and then engineering it back down to earth – delivering something real and tangible from a vision. So what has this got to do with Government?

Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/debbieweil

We can all let our minds roam free to imagine a more productive public service. Hindered by less red tape, such an ‘imagineered’ Government would be characterised by a nimble, responsive model capable of delivering citizen services efficiently and cost effectively.

Most of us look forward to the day that someone can engineer the roadmap together to actually get Government there. Yet it’s such a Herculean task. We need a hero!

When it comes to creating more transparent, flexible, connected and responsive Government, Gartner’s VP of Research Andrea Di Maio thinks Vivek Kundra comes close to wearing his undies on the outside.

Kundra is the US Federal CIO and he is charged with executing a strategy for Federal Government to make better use of technology so services can be delivered to the American people with greater transparency and efficiency at less cost.

Impossible? Perhaps not. Kundra has developed a 25 Point Plan outlining exactly how he intends to achieve the goal. Di Maio provides an initial appraisal of Kundra’s approach and gives 75% of the content two thumbs up.

Achieving this will, according to Kundra, require “relentless focus on near-term execution, recognition of past lessons, and a long-term vision for the future.”

Let’s all hope that Kundra succeeds and in doing so, sets a new and positive benchmark for other Governments that are currently assessing their own ability to deliver more to their people.

Alcoa · CIO · Citizens · CMS · Disney · Federal Government · Gartner · Gartner VP · Government Services · hero · Imagineering · improved processes · transparent · transparent government · US Federal C