[The following is a rework of a post I wrote regarding adding value to charities on my corporate blog (over here), but it was a while ago and the basic principles seem highly applicable to the public sector, so here goes...]
A lot has been written in recent years regarding the importance of ICT (IS, IT, technical; pick your collective term of choice) staff having an understanding of the organisation in which they work and therefore being able to add real value to the organisation through their selection and application of technology. Companies the world around have taken heed of this, particularly after noting the positive results generated for the trailblazers, and have explored ways of getting their ICT staff aligned with the organisation (instead of treating them as outsiders). Many specialist sectors tend to be a little behind in these trends, and it seemed that possibly this message was taking its time getting through to the public sector in the UK or, at least, not in a way that is apparent to me (honourable exceptions noted!).
So for the benefit of the public good (sic [1]), here’s my take on the how and the why.
First a brief history. Traditionally IT support (note not I “C” T then, as phones were commonly under operations or buildings and email was strictly for geeks) was a very specialised task, maintaining complex and fragile technology for the benefit of another, better embedded (although similarly misunderstood, they tell me ;)), group of specialists: the finance team. As computing technology became more mainstream the function naturally continued to report to finance, with whom, it turned out, they had little in common. Other than similarly esoteric sets of knowledge and language. And an ability to strike fear into those who work in other functions…
As a result of reporting to an upstream function that had no real interest in IT challenges and opportunities, IT staff became quite isolated from the rest of the organisation. The situation was then exacerbated by the rapid move to pervasive computing, leaving many non-IT people a little confused and resentful of this technology being pushed upon them and by proxy resentful of those geeky types who understood it; this was magnified by said geeky types’ need to associate with large, noisy yet sensitive machinery and therefore away from everyone else: cue The IT Crowd.
The end result was an entire generation of IT staff who didn’t (appear) to “understand the business” because the rest of the company basically ignored them. Or outsourced them. And then email and the web rose in importance as a way for organisations to communicate both internally and externally, then along came VOIP (telephony over the computer network). IT became ICT. The corporate communications solutions are scary things to put in the hands of people you don’t actually communicate with…
So to some thoughts on resolving that aspect of the current situation. First, all non-ICT staff note: actually, despite appearances, techie types are not just bright, they’re mostly pretty sociable. Indeed the ones you perceive as the quietest probably know and interact with more people from more countries, races and religions than you. It’s just they don’t know what these people look like, sound like, their real names, etc. because they communicate using technology such as online chat. And spend so much time communicating using online chat (commonly IRC, which considerably predates AIM, MSN and GChat) and email (around in its current form since the 1980s) that they have sometimes failed to develop face to face communication skills to the same degree. Nonetheless they communicate, and richly. Think on this: who do you think invented emoticons (smilies)? As in who saw the need to add emotional (social) content to text communication? Teenagers 5 or so years ago when they got mobile phones and instant messaging? No, geeks, a quarter of a century ago ;).
So act one is bringing ICT staff inside. Stop treating them as something that services “the business” and realise they are or should be an intrinsic part of the organisation. Accept that given the world is now heavily, for good or bad, dependent on technology and realise that your organisation stands to gain a lot from clever use of the same technology. Then realise that the people who are absolutely and utterly, without question, best placed to identify and implement new technologies that will be of benefit to the organisation are the people who actually have enough of an interest in technology (and the organisation) to know about new things long before the BBC and the teenagers. That would be the IT staff some of you out-sourced a few years ago…
Bringing technical staff inside means having representation of ICT at the most senior levels of the organisation. Not someone that ICT staff report to but does not have sufficient time in their day, nor in their previous careers, to actually appreciate or understand technology and what it could do to help, but someone whose job it is to think strategically about information and communication, and how technology could support and improve their processing and use for the organisation and its objectives. Someone who when talking to you does not have to worry about whether your laptop is working, just as the finance and admin director shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not your pencil is sharp.
Now on to how ICT staff in the public sector can add real value, for free. In fact not just for free but with a great big budget reduction to boot. I’m not just talking here about simple improved processes, nicer telephone systems or a slightly faster web application for planning information, although those as well. But it can take some time for the best of us to identify technologies that will help in a given sector, let alone an individual organisation, but with public sector organisations there are a couple of neat starting points.
Most importantly think about this: all public sector organisations depend on a single aspect of culture; the willingness of people to give, to pool resources for the public good; and in case of quite a large number of people, to be prepared to work in public service. Regardless of what else a public sector organisation does, educate, feed, heal, house, coordinate, etc., it is essential to their success that the general populace has the desire and interest in having them there, to see sharing services and helping those less fortunate as something positive. Anything that promotes this sharing behaviour in our culture is a good thing for the public sector; the opposite is also the case.
This positive aspect of cultures and individuals is the same that allows open source software to thrive; people give of their time, their skills and/or their cash for the benefit of the greater good. So there is one simple thing that ICT staff in the public sector can do to add real value, to really help the public and themselves:
switch to using open source.
Switch to open source not because a given technical solution available at that instant of assessment and acquisition is “the best”. Not because the use of open source allows you to absolutely ensure the chosen solution becomes the best (once in use and the success criteria far better understood). Not even because the same technical people interested in open source are more likely to be interested in working in the public sector even if that means challenging working conditions and sometimes lower pay. Nor for the other long term cost savings offered by open source. Think, for a moment, about the tendency of the public sector to be helping the under-privileged and how open source solutions have no cost of purchase so your use is likely to facilitate (legal…) adoption by those very same under-privileged people and how one public sector body’s use of an open source application will tend to result in the improvement of that software for all the other users; let that influence the decision.
But in the final analysis, switch to open source because it promotes a sharing mentality in the greater society. The ultimate way to add value to the public sector through technology. Technically not simple, but philosophically so, and ancient philosophies at that. Cultivate the desire to share; giving begats giving; do unto others as you would be done by.
To promote your public sector organisation, act for the public good[1] in your choice of ICT…
[1] More on the public good in a later post…