GOVERNMENT, THE ROAD AHEAD
Blog Posts about the Future of Government
SERVICE TO THE CITIZEN: CHAMPIONS OF CHANGE AWARDS 2019 EVENT
by Frank A. McDonough | May 6, 2019
Martha Dorris founded The Service to the Citizen Awards in 2018 to honor and celebrate the successes of champions of change delivering outstanding service to citizens. To honor these champions, she organized #STTCAwards as a kick off to the Public Service Recognition Week. I attended the celebration along with 180 government officials, corporate officials, industry sponsors, and luminaries from the
Administration and Congress.
PLANNING TO EXIT THE PRE-DIGITAL AGE
by Frank A. McDonough | April 1, 2019
The basic structure of many federal agencies emerged long before the digital age. Today, government employees labor while trapped in an outdated bubble attempting to respond to fast changing technology, social and cultural trends, and short term political
leadership.
Agencies do change. The General Services Administration, for example, has reorganized and consolidated many times since Congress created it in 1949. Its workforce has declined 70 percent in 31 years — from 42,000 employees in 1980 to 12,600 recently. In addition, it has introduced new programs over the years to meet the needs of the agencies it supports.
Contrary to public opinion, the government is often an early adopter of emerging technology and it responds to changing conditions. However, this response is often in pockets, the result of action takenby one individual.
ORGANIZING GOVERNMENT FOR AI
by Frank A. McDonough | January 17, 2019
There are two issues here.
Should there be a technology Tsar at the head of government in the White House overseeing AI
programs across the government?
DIGITAL SOCIETY AND AI PROGRESS IN 30 COUNTRIES
by Frank A. McDonough | October 11, 2018
Governments today are transforming from electronic government to digital government (from E to D). What can we learn from their progress?
WHEN USING YOUR OWN EMAIL SERVER MAKES SENSE
by Frank A. McDonough | July 7, 2016
When Hillary Clinton served in the Senate beginning in 2001, each senator's office had its own personal computer server and local-area network to manage email and other IT requirements. Lockheed Martin, under contract, supported each senator's personal computer server. A more efficient centralized network serving the 100 senators did not exist.
Today, nothing has changed. Each senator's office is a networked island with about 50 or fewer users. Although they are examples of wasteful inefficiency, those islands also are less vulnerable to hackers.
In 2009, when Clinton moved to the State Department, she was accustomed to controlling her own resources based on her experience in the Senate. She might have changed her approach, but the State Department was a backwater organization in terms of technology.
ARE YOU HYPED ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HYPE?
by Frank A. McDonough | May 28, 2018
If you search the Web you will find tens of thousands of references for Artificial Intelligence promising many things, some quite outlandish. For 60 years AI and its near term prospects have been overstated and exaggerated. Rodney Brooks, former director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT comments — https://is.gd/7nlagI— that AI has been overestimated again and again, in the 1960’s, in the 1980’s and again now. Even today, there is little evidence that AI is producing increased productivity in the major sectors of medicine, manufacturing, and service industries.
Is there any basis for the current hype? Possibly, there is! New resources including more powerful computers, ingenious new algorithms, and huge quantities of accessible data that help the algorithms to “learn” are coming available. These resources have stimulated progress in pattern recognition, language translation, speech recognition, image recognition, and game playing.
THE MILLIONS OF SKILLED JOBS THAT ONCE ADMINISTERED COMPUTERS, NETWORKS, AND SOFTWARE ARE GONE, REPLACED BY AUTOMATION
by Frank A. McDonough | April 19, 2018
Apple built a colossal billion-dollar 500,000 square foot data center with a 100-acre solar farm to provide 60-100% of the power required to run the data center. This massive facility requires only 50 full time positions, many of which required skills that locals did not have, requiring hiring from outside.
Facebook has a system called Cyborg that allows a single technician to manage as many as 20,000 computers.
LITTLE THINGS AND IMAGINATION PRODUCE SUPERIOR CX PROGRAMS AND NOTABLE CAREERS
by Frank A. McDonough | February 2018
In our lifetime, each of us enters into a new life phase several times. While it is not the government’s job to hold each person’s hand on their journey, the government can create an environment allowing each citizen the possibility of an improved experience in each stage of life.
Consider just one example of a new life phase among the many transitions in which the citizen, will face. The Pew Research Center reports that 10,000 Americans turn 65 each day; and Pew predicts that 10,000 people will cross that threshold every day for the next 19 years, and enter a new stage in life such as enrolling in Medicare and retiring. Will each have a good customer experience with the government in this and in their other life phases?
NEW YEAR 2018, NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR SOME
by Frank A. McDonough | January 2018
Each New Year brings the opportunity for a fresh start, as when you finish a dreadful first nine holes but look forward to the back nine for a fresh start and a new beginning. For millennium, people have greeted the New Year with optimism even in the depths of war, an economic depression, serious illness, in good or bad times for the nation. Through it all even in the worst of times, some people thrive and climb to greater heights.
What makes the difference? Why do some do better no matter the condition around them? Many have written attempting to answer these questions.
ADVICE FOR THE NEW TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
by Frank A. McDonough | December 2, 2016
At the Press Club on December 2, 2016, Elaine Kamarck (White House with Bill Clinton, now with Brookings, and Harvard’s Kennedy School) discussed her new book “Why President’s Fail,” She had advice for incoming high-level officials.
SEVEN REASONS TO TREAT LEGACY SYSTEMS AS AN AGGRESSIVE BEAR IN MATING SEASON
by Frank A. McDonough | July 27, 2016
There are good reasons why government managers have not updated major legacy systems. Only the inexperienced will undertake the challenges despite the often-discussed $3 billion IT modernization fund.
The phrase Legacy System defines a system developed years ago, a system that continues to process important government responsibilities.