EP 07: The Value of 'Digital Mindsets' in Local Government
Where's your local government with technology? Sensors? Automation? Readiness for self-driving vehicles? Teleportation? Kidding on that last one but, because we're in an age of exponential advances in technology and the Internet of Things, and with the consumer market now so accustomed to quick gratification and one-touch app services, there's pressure on government to act more quickly, streamlined and futuristic than ever before. ".... government just can't be immune to this massive change" in our culture and commerce, says William Eggers, executive director of Deloitte's Center for Government Insights. Eggers is our guest as we dive into today's digital technology, where it's going and how local governments can catch up. It's even an issue with government employee hiring and retention, he says. A lot to think about here. Show notes: William Eggers at Deloitte - http://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/weggers.html "Delivering on Digital" - http://www.deliveringondigital.com
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Transcript
On this episode of Municipal Equation. So far it's been raised so high and we've gotten so spoiled and our assumptions so suddenly and deeply that for anything to operate less fast or intuitively or efficiently than Amazon, Google, Uber, Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb, it's a death knell for companies and they can't escape it and government just can't be immune to this massive change. Yet some parts of government are still living back in the nineteen nineties.
Is there a new baseline for technology in city hall? And are citizens expectations changing? We talk about it with William Eggers, executive director for Deloitte's Center for Government Insights. His latest book is called Delivering on Digital, the Innovators and Technologies that are Transforming Government. My name is Ben Brown, and this is Municipal Equation from the North Carolina League of Municipalities,
episode seven. Well, technology started to move around. Government at the time was one of the big innovators. In the nineteen fifties, the the US government needed to push the industry to create a a model of of, a surveillance system, which became a model of some big iron, highly techno high technology system at the time. But they pushed this, created a a real need that the government had. And we can all we all know where we are now as technology has evolved over the years. The government still trying to build big iron systems isn't as efficient as it used to be or isn't as innovative as it used to be.
That was a clip from the North Carolina Digital Government Summit on August 31 in Raleigh. Speaking with Patrick Moore, a senior fellow for the Center for Digital Government, who delivered a really great presentation on where things are going for government in terms of technology and what resources are out there to help government understand that change and adapt. The bottom line is change is happening, and just like in the consumer market, you'll fall behind if you don't keep up. The thing is, technology evolves and new conventions form. When they do, consumers are playing with a new baseline, so they have new basic expectations from virtually everything they interact with, from how they hail a ride, ride sharing, to how they order merchandise with an app, or to how they check their bank accounts with a button on their smartphones. It's the way things have gotten to be in the consumer market. So how is government adapting to that? I caught up recently with William Eggers, who heads up the Center for Government Insights at Deloitte. He's an expert on the pulse of innovation and how government can make the best use of it. He's written nine books, and his latest, Delivering on Digital, looks at technologies that are being put to good use at the government level, while also discussing governments that, at this point, probably need an upgrade or at least an understanding of why and how. And that's what we focus on in this interview. Why it's important to understand the shape of technology today and consumer expectations that may necessitate upgrades in government. At city hall, out in the field, at the tax office, what have you. But first, I want to point out that there are a lot of great innovations being integrated or applied in government, notably at the local government level. Municipalities of all sizes are doing some advanced stuff in terms of smart city efforts and Internet of Things Adoption or IOT that are really redefining how government works. At the Digital Government Summit, the North Carolina League of Municipalities worked with the State Department of Information Technology and GovTech or Government Technology Magazine to recognize some of the local governments that are good examples to follow. All sizes of municipality too. This,
I I think there's a lot of innovation happening in North Carolina, so we're gonna work, year after year beyond here, working with the counties and the cities and the league and the rest of our state agencies to get the word out about all the innovation that's already occurring in in in North Carolina.
The town of Benson, for one, has fewer than 4,000 residents, but they're saving taxpayer money with tech upgrades like, for example, a smart grid system for its electric and water meters that tracks better utility data. And that helps the town quickly pounce on irregularities like water leaks and power outages. The city of Raleigh, which has about 440,000 residents as of 2014, is doing a lot with IoT, gathering all kinds of data that help the city prioritize money and manpower. Stuff as practical as placing sensors inside trash cans to alert the city when they're full. Data like that helps them plan out their collection routes. And that's a small example. They're doing way more sophisticated stuff, and we're planning a future episode on that. But meanwhile, there may be a number of local governments who maybe don't see the need to take steps like that. I. E. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. Upgrades can be expensive. And if we're doing fine, we're doing fine. The mentality might go. But what if we get to a point where there is absolutely a new baseline, a new minimum on technology, and a quicker, easier delivery of services to taxpayers? What if we are at some form of that right now? Whether we are or aren't, it's at least a conversation to think about. In Eggers' case, he's written a lot about it. Entire books. William, in the public mind, there may be a disconnect between the conveniences of modern consumerism and government. So in the private market, you know, you've got an app for everything, really, just about anything you can think of. You know, the private sector is digital and customer service is at the touch of a button. Often, you can order a pizza with an app. But, you know, when people think of government or having to start some some kind of process at city hall, I think a lot of people out there picture the opposite. I think they picture a clipboard and a triplicate paperwork and what a slow process that is. And that's frankly that can be chilling to people who these days are used to quick gratification. You know, some governments might be totally up to speed, but others not as much. What do you see happening? What why does that divide exist?
You know, I I couldn't agree with you more. In a world where any song can be played instantly, any product center can arrive to your doorstep in twenty four hours, and a ride is never more than three minutes away from your phone. It's simply inconceivable to have to wait have the patience of waiting weeks or months when waiting for a product or service. I mean, the the bar has been raised so high and we've gotten so spoiled and our assumptions so suddenly and deeply that for anything to operate less fast or intuitively or efficiently than Amazon, Google, Uber, Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb, It's a death knell for companies, and they can't escape it, and government just can't be immune to this massive change. Yet some parts of government are still living back in the 1990 as as you, allude to, and that's unacceptable. But I I do think there's hope and lots of hope. It's because of that hope and of because of the necessity of closing that gap between the public and private sectors that I wrote the book because no single factor is gonna alter citizens' experience of government more than the pure power of digital technology. And we see governments all over the world from Chicago to Seoul to London to Ottawa, who are in the midst of this historic and oftentimes wrenching, transformation as they abandon these analog operating models in favor of their digital counterparts. And what the book does is try to show how do you get from here to there.
So is there a this is kind of an abstract question, but is there a new baseline for technology and government, and how do you describe what that baseline might be?
No. Absolutely. I mean the the government that oftentimes when we think about technology wise with the government that the systems that governments have been operating living with for the last decade, few decades, you might call it the green screen syndrome where they governments continue to handle critical business processes on computers that today's ideally probably wouldn't even recognize, you know, large piles of plastic and steel and wire. They take up a lot of room and operate in the most unwieldy fashion. With a green screen interface. It's a world of COBOL systems built decades ago pre World Wide Web, and these legacy systems are really at the top of the list of operational concerns, for many, CIOs and government today. And because, you know, the world that we're living in today from a technology landscape is a world of software as a service, cloud computing, agile development, quick, fast, digital products that are very user friendly, that are modular in terms of how they're built. Very, very different than the big kind of head slow, heavyweight systems, that we've been using and building over the last thirty years. And that's the good news is that that if you do it right, you're much less likely to face kind of these big, I think, costly failures. That's know, the difficult part is a lot of this is very new, for organizations Right. Both public and private sector.
So with some of these old systems still in place, when a government's technology systems aren't up to speed up up to speed, so to speak, do you think that might impact, that government's ability to recruit, good talent, especially younger talent? Because, you know, there there might be a lot of smart, millennials, for for instance, who are way more acclimated to the cutting edge.
Again, I could not agree with you more. It's that one of the one of the things I write a lot about in the book is the need to adapt to them. They're not gonna adapt to you when you look at recruiting talent. You know, they want the latest and greatest technology. They want less hierarchical, more matrix sort of, places of work and organizational structures. They wanna be able to dress the same way they want you to express their creativity and so forth, and you could recruit people into a bad environment without all that, but they're just going to lead. And the leading government organizations in terms of attracting and retaining digital talent have just done that. They've adapted to them, and they've they've adapted their organization. They created digital service units, and they've given them access to the latest and greatest technology, which I think is is is really important to do. Now, you know, there are a lot of organizations with big legacy systems that they still have to have to get around, but, nevertheless, if people believe that they're moving in the right direction and that they have, the all the intention of developing good digital products, I think governments can attract a lot of the best and brightest. Why? Because, you know I think a lot of people said I can fix big problems if I go to work in government, and government's got a lot of big issue areas, and I could play a big role in solving those problems as opposed to building the hundredth, new dating app.
Well, you know, of course, it's also, expensive to upgrade your platform of technology, so to speak. You know, sometimes it takes not only investing in the technology or or the software or the hardware itself, but I also imagine, you know, staff training or even hiring to make sure that technology is applied the right way, expertise. And then on top of that, there's the expectation on government to be as frugal as possible because it's public money, tax dollars, that's a big consideration too right?
Well first of all in terms of the spending, the systems that governments have been building the last few decades have been very expensive systems, custom sort of systems, and those those are extraordinarily expensive, and oftentimes high risk. And if you look at the federal government, over $90,000,000,000 a year spent on technology. That's a lot of money, but 75 percent of that money is actually spent on maintaining existing systems as opposed to kind of building new ones. So you need to shift that money because that there's, most people you'll talk to in government that that there is enough money there, it's just not being spent in the in the right way right now. It needs to be shifted towards these newer systems. Secondly, in skilling, you're right, that their governments need to build digitally savvy workforces and that creates requires a lot of reskilling. One of the examples I looked at in the book was the, UK Digital Academy out of the Department of Work Intentions. They had a simple idea. Many of the department's employees lacked the critical skills necessary necessary to complete their work. So the transformation lead, Kevin Connington came in and he said, you know what we're gonna do is we're gonna hack that and fix that system by creating a digital academy, a six week boot camp where employees could learn key concepts like user centered design or agile development, and have and specific skills like wire framing, cradle paper prototyping, design thinking, and coding. And after a certain amount of time, they were sent back to work, but still not fully proficient in those skills so that they became what the Brits called Plumbers' Name. In effect, skilled enough to help with the base level of projects, work alongside experts, and get their skills up. And what the department is trying to do is literally reskill thousands of employees through this sort of a a model which involves the boot camp and also experiential learning. And I think more and more governments need to do that because, you know, today's age, just about everyone needs to be digitally savvy, to work in an organization effectively.
So in what areas do you see government lagging behind the most in technology, and what's at stake in those areas?
Well, I I I think it's not just a technology issue. It's actually a lot of it is a mindset issue, the digital mindset, and that's what, I spend a lot of time writing about in the book, which is essentially the digital mindset is more akin to the Silicon Valley mindset in many respects than the traditional organizations. It's it's a different attitude about customers, a different way of launching products and services, a different way of working, and there's a number of characteristics that seem to be common within organizations and individuals that currently that really understand the opportunities in digital transformation. They have a belief in openness, a belief in user centricity, co creation with the citizens, with businesses, simplicity in design, and agility. And and those are the key things, and so one of the areas that I think government needs to do is is focus a lot more on the end user and designing for the end user by essentially approaching it like design thinking and putting yourself in their shoes, whether it's a business owner, whether it's a individual citizen, whether it's an another organization that's designing digital products that work for those individuals and understanding what are the pain points and how do you fix them and having kind of this extreme focus on on the user and creating better customer experiences for people interacting with government.
So let's create some takeaways here. And this might require a little bit of reiteration, but, just to underline a few things to take away. Let let's say that I work for a local government or an agency that hasn't done much updating since, say, the early two thousands. What's important for me to know because I I might think that the systems I have on hand are working just fine.
Well, the first thing you need to do is to, basically create a digital strategy. We surveyed over 1,200 government officials in more than 70 countries around the world, and we found that less than half of them actually had a digital strategy. And that was the biggest predictor of other problems in digital from a lack of workforce skill to a lack of leadership to problems with procurement and so on. So first and foremost, if you don't have a digital strategy, you got to create one. Secondly, I think it's really important to understand what are the best practices out there in other governments in the private sector and then benchmark yourself against those best practices both from a technology standpoint but also from this notion of how do you go about business? Are you are you building systems in an agile way or through an old waterfall methodology? Are you building them in a modular way right now? Are you to what extent are you taking advantage of the full toolset of digital, which is analytics and cloud computing, software as a service, and social media, and mobile? How do those all stack up right now? And then again, to to really go out there and look at how how are your users, your citizens perceiving you from a digital perspective. I I I know that my my wife recently went in to get her driver's license fixed because the DMV had actually made a mistake on our address. They they they basically just, transposed a few numbers. And so she wanted to do that, and she needed to go into the go into the building, have, like, 10 pieces of information including, like, birth certificate, Social Security card, on and on and on, multiple trips because of the mistake the DMV made. Now that's unacceptable in today's age because it's so different than our experiences dealing with the best private companies who do technology, and there are governments who are getting really really good at this. And so understanding who those are and benchmarking yourself again.
So this is kind of a wordy question, but there are certain topics of conversation out there today with regard to technologies that are going to change, how the public sector delivers services or meets the needs of residents who are on board with that kind of technology areas that we need to prepare for, but they still seem like concepts that are still fairly well off into the future, at least in perception. And I'm thinking of things like self driving automobiles, for instance, even though we're seeing things happening right now with self driving cars. But what are some of the technologies or concepts on the horizon that government officials need to at least be thinking about so they can have some competency by the time these things are are a reality that they have to deal with? Right. I mean because we are living in an age of exponential technology change
And what that means is that, the technologies are getting better and better and exponential curve, they're not leveling off. And so it sometimes feels like the red queen effect, which means we're running in place and not going anywhere because they're changing so quickly. And so right when we get used to digital and mobile, new technologies on the horizon are the Internet of Things which is going to transform most of what government does in many respects because there will be, sensors will be ubiquitous, in our houses, in our work, in our cars, in all sorts of public infrastructure. Right. Cognitive technologies and artificial intelligence, which is finally starting to see some of the, payoffs that people have been talking about for generations in terms of foreign language translation, voice translation, machine to machine intelligence. And and that's going to result in a lot of tasks that were previously manually done by humans will be done by machines, and also we will see Watson like intelligence widely available I think in the future for a lot of different people in the field, whether they're transportation workers, health care workers, child welfare workers, and so forth. So thinking about augmentation of of humans through, machines, and how is that going to impact all sorts of different government workers from police officers, to, family, social workers. Those are those are a few of the really important technologies you mentioned autonomous vehicles and the kind of the future of mobility. That's gonna have a massive impact on everything from you know, gas tax collection to traffic congestion, to to many other to even how wide the roads are that we build because you're gonna need to, you know, you can be able to build the roads much less wide than before and so the smart governments are getting on top of these, they're thinking about them, they're planning for them, they're doing things like we have these 2020 workshops that we've done around the website where we basically work with governments and say what does 2020 or 2025 look for you, and how do you get ahead of the curve right now in understanding, put together a strategic plan, to deal with those technologies rather than being kind of taken by surprise when they're ubiquitous in our society.
So at what point did you did you decide that you needed to write a book about this and what kind of research went into that?
Well this is my ninth book, and I've written previous books. I wrote a book called GOV two point o, fourteen years ago, maybe, no, twelve years ago, which looked at, the .com era, the technology revolution. In this book, I wanted to update it and say, why did a lot of the things that we expected to happen in the EgoB era, why did those not occur, yet? And will this age of digital be different? And I think the answer is yes. It will be different, but we have to learn the lessons from the past. Secondly, I wrote another book that looked at why some big government initiatives succeed and why some fail, and I and when you looked at healthcare.gov, the question is why why did that fail so miserably in this launch? And then of course it led to you know great changes afterwards, in many respects because doing digital well is different than doing traditional government program or IT delivery, and so I wanted to write a book that laid out how do you actually do it and what can we learn from the best government innovators all over the world because no one had written that book yet, and so those were two of the the big reasons I decided to write that book and I thought you know this is the time because there's almost no issue impacting government more, than the digital transformation that we're seeing in organizations all around us.
Well, for anyone listening who wants to learn more about your research or your books, where where do we go? We've got a website called deliveringondigital.com.
On the website you can access playbooks that look that tells tells you all about how to do everything from digital age procurement to building digital capacity. There's dozens of case studies that are available on the website. There's a lot of articles that I've written for publications like Governing and, Government Executive and Federal Computer Week and also a series of other tools that are all free of charge. And there's information on how to order a copy of the book, whether it's an ebook or a physical copy.
William Eggers, thank you so much for being on the show. We really do appreciate this. Thank you, Ben. I I really enjoyed it. Alright. So as this interview focused on governments that maybe haven't made the jump yet to technological advancement, let me reiterate that we're well aware of individual governments across the country that are doing advanced work with technology, whether it's putting sensors on city buses to clock traffic data, or setting up open data portals for residents, reporters, developers, whoever, to create customizable data sets of public information for whatever purpose they want. That's, something that cities like Asheville and Durham, North Carolina, among others, have done really well and gotten recognition for. There are plenty of examples, and I'd love to hear what your town is doing with technology. Maybe it's a creative spin that most other towns haven't thought of yet. Please let me know so I can share it in a future episode. You can email me at bbrown@nclm.org or connect with us on Twitter. The handle is at muni equation. That's at m u n I equation. And thanks to everyone who has reached out with ideas and feedback. That's vital to helping this podcast grow. As is your referral, please tell your friends and colleagues about this podcast. It's available at soundcloud.com/municipal You can subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Overcast, TuneIn, almost any podcast app. Municipal Equation is made possible by the North Carolina League of Municipalities online at nclm.org. My name is Ben Brown. Talk to you soon.
