Eggheads Figure Out How to Make Government IT Projects Work
October 14, 2008
One of my two or three readers sent me a link to a Web site with the consultants’ seal of approval stamped on it–the Harvard Business Review. Here’s the link to an article that provides a sneak peek at study findings by two super smart business wizards. The author of the article is Rita McGrath. The title of the posting is “Six Problems Facing Large Government IT Projects (and Their Solutions). To be candid, the melt down of the US financial system and the sterling decisions of several high profile government agencies loomed large as I read this Web log posting. I can’t find much about which to grouse regarding Ms. McGrath’s six problems. In fact, each of these is standard operating procedure due to factors that are tough to control or change. When I was working at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Ralph Vinovich, Congress Robert Michel’s admnistrrative assistant told me, “A new president issues an order. It takes three years and nine months to move from the White House to an agency and then down to the workers. The response then takes another three years to move from the workers back to the administration. As a result, changes initiated by one administration take two terms to make a round trip through an agency. Then a new administration comes in and the process begins again. Change is tough.” I assume Ms. McGrath and the researcher who compiled this list of six problems have data that prove Mr. Vinovich off base. I noted some causes of IT failure listed in Ms. McGrath’s posting. My list included:
- Inept and uninformed consultants.
- Government executives who know zero about technology yet are responsible for technical projects and adjudicating technical issues when disagreements surface.
- Contractors who are better at selling jobs and keeping government executives happy than making IT systems work.
- Software vendors who install software and then work like beavers to write code to make the system somewhat similar to what was in the statement of work.
- Statements of work that include hefty chunks of science fiction, thus ensuring that a system will never be finished because the technology to perform such tasks as “intelligent case management” or “data reconciliation and transformation” are hard, expensive, and beyond the capabilities of commercial off the shelf software.
One quick example. A unit of the White House licensed a high profile, expensive content management system. The project manager wanted to manage links on a Web site. The government procured a massive, hugely complex system that had many features but not the one the project manager needed. The result? The big, expensive system and the smarmy consultant are still billing to make this pig fly. The project manager worked to get a headcount increase in order to manage the links manually. Double your expense, double your fun.
No wonder we have a fiscal crisis.
Stephen Arnold, October 15, 2008
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2 Responses to “Eggheads Figure Out How to Make Government IT Projects Work”
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maybe the US government could have a peer review of projects and bills.
government.slashdot.org or somesuch,
comment, review and be open… report results and be accountable.
and I have a radical proposal, if a bill requires funding, there should be a line item of funding removal to pay for it.
exit off interstate – $3mil
remove string bean study $ -1mil
remove funding for some pork -.5 mil
remove funding for some building – 1.5 mil
budget passed.
nah, it would never work…
Bull Fiddle,
I like your thinking. Craig Hosmer told me that when a new president comes into office it takes four years for one executive order to move from the top of an agency to its lowest levels and then back up to the top. Change requires two terms.
Stephen Arnold, October 15, 2008