Check THIS out: Michigan to merge departments of Management and Budget (DMB) and Information Technology (DIT).

OK, so it's not THAT rare to have the two units together. But check the small print:

• "Kenneth Theis, current director of DIT, will oversee the consolidation of the two departments and will ultimately be named director of the new department. How many jurisdictions are putting their CIO in charge of budgeting, the most important policy process in government? (Congratulations, Ken!)
• A quote from Governor Jennifer Granholm: "This merger also reflects the enormous role of technology in streamlining government and serving our citizens." Yes, but how many other jurisdictions are reflecting that role by giving real power to someone whose primary experience has been with IT-enabled innovation? (Congratulations, Governor Granholm!)
  

Cross-boundary, enterprise-wide, IT-based innovations become much easier when you have serious influence not only over the technology budgets, but over all budgets.

Of course I may be a little early with my optimism, but I wanted to draw the Michigan move to your attention.

A hard part of government IT budgeting comes from what I call "budgeting myopia." That is, while budget preparation, by its nature, spends the vast majority of its effort looking one year ahead on a program-by-program basis for incremental adjustments in current activities, the high-value IT can't be found there. You have to lift your vision to look instead for long-term, cross-program innovations.

So it takes an unusual budget director to set up a process to uncover the best IT investments.

Let's wish Ken and Michigan the best.

Meanwhile, follow the link HERE to comment and let us know if you see other jurisdictions doing similar things, and/or what you see as the pros or cons in the Michigan approach. Tough times will clearly lead to more consolidations, but will there be more like the one announced the other day in Michigan?

Best,

Jerry

The Obama campaign has attracted lots of attention for how it used technology to get people engaged. The web reduced barriers to participation since you could fit your campaign activity into small blocks of time from anywhere. Responding to a variety of "5 minute options," Obama supporters gave more money and pulled off more election-relevant events than "the pros" had ever before thought possible. Future campaigns will clearly learn from this. Technology has become a strategic tool for the "civic engagement" called campaigns.

But what about post-election governance? Many are interested in the new tools. But they are clearly wary about Web 2.0 as an augmenter and mediator of government's interactions with the public - it's all too new, too easily to explode out of control, and too vague. What is "civic engagement" anyway?

Abstractly, technology-enabled "civic engagement" simply continues the "e-gov" trend of using the net to reach the public. The big e-gov win so far has been services you can reach "online, not in line." An internet world offers "anytime, anywhere" access to a huge variety of private and public services.

What "engagement" will do is increasingly shift online interactions from one-way transactions (government delivering services like tax forms to the public) into two-way relationships, where the public will play a more engaged role in defining problems, setting priorities, and "co-producing" services. As with campaigns, substantial "work" on public problems could take place as volunteer effort without money changing hands. We've seen the net make it convenient and rewarding enough to create a huge body of open source software from a largely volunteer workforce. And we've long had volunteers for community projects like cleaning up vacant lots, helping with the elderly, looking out for crime in the neighborhood, and meeting with elected representatives so both constituents and representatives can learn from each other.

The question, then, is what will happen if technology reduces barriers and increases participation in these and other "civic engagement" events?

Today's example, complete with scientifically collected evaluation data, can be found in the report:  Online Town Hall Meetings: Exploring Democracy in the 21^st Century.

This was a very interesting, if simple, experiment, with very interesting results.

The experiment allowed a variety of U.S. Representatives and one Senator to meet online with their constituents. Each of 21 meetings featured one of the Members of Congress. The meetings in total engaged roughly 600 constituents. The offers to attend were sent to a representative sample of constituents. Those accepting were tracked with before and after surveys as a test group (those who attended the sessions) and a control group (similar demographics, but not admitted to the sessions). The issue discussed was immigration reform, and the Members of Congress held diverse views on how immigration should be handled. The sessions were neutrally moderated and accepted all questions including hostile questions (only redundant, off-topic, unintelligible, or questions that were profane or abjectly disrespectful were filtered out).

Some of the key results:

• The online sessions attracted many who don't normally participate in politics and increased their participation in a subsequent election. Compared to normal electorates, the online group was younger, with more minorities and women, with fewer churchgoers, with fewer holding strong party affiliations, and with more having low incomes.  Compared to the control group, the members of the online group were more likely to eventually vote, to follow the election, and to attempt to persuade others how to vote.
• The online sessions were:
• extremely popular with constituents (95% would like to do it again) and
• effective at increasing the participant's approval of the Member's position (from 20% in the before surveys to 58% afterwards) and of the Member (from a before session 29% net positive - i.e., approve minus disapprove - to 47% net positive after).

The online sessions were convenient for the Members of Congress (all they needed was a phone, with no travel to specific sites) and also for the constituents (all they needed was a computer with a connection to the internet).

This study, conducted by David Lazer of the Kennedy School and others, generated further comments you can find here.

This example clearly doesn't answer all the questions we've got about civic engagement. But it does represent the kind of concrete testing and data gathering we need if we're going to make sense of civic engagement now and for the future.

What do you see taking place in the "civic engagement" space? And how would you prioritize that work?

• High potential return with low risk? Something to harvest?
• High potential return but with high risk? Something to closely manage?
• Low potential return with low risk? Something to delegate to others?
• Low potential return with high risk? Something to be sure you avoid?

You can follow the blog back here for comments.

All the best,

Jerry

Very interesting McKinsey interview with Scott Griffith, CEO of Zipcar today.

Zipcar offers rental by the hour from nearby in the neighborhood. That contrasts with traditional rental cars that typically offer by the day or week from the airport.

IT developed over the past twenty years makes this happen efficiently and effectively enough to make it a business. Customers, after all, have got to be easily able to find if a car is available, where it is, how to get in, how to solve any emergencies that may arise, how to pay, etc. Those are all information problems. Wireless networks and web services are essential, as is comfort in the population in handling similar web transactions.

I think you'll find the details interesting, here.

In particular note that Zipcar is increasing the utilization of cars that would otherwise be largely idle. Zipcar says that, in comparison to the normal rental car companies, they roughly double the revenue per car and double the number of cars covered per employee .

Theory suggests that, as the fleet gets larger, availability should increase and the walk to your "local" car should decrease. It also suggests that, as the community sharing the fleet increases, utilization per car should increase and the cost per person decrease. This is a basic economy of scale for shared services. It works to the extent that "customers" share in the savings and consider the process responsive to the individual needs. It apparently is working for Zipcar.

And, as we all have heard, it should work also for cloud computing, if the kinks can be worked out. What, after all, is the utilization rate for your laptop, or even your department's or your jurisdictions central servers?

I've not used a Zipcar myself, but know some friends who have and have liked the experience. Have you tried Zipcar? What did you think of the cost and quality? Zipcar says they are now renting the fleet management information systems to fleet managers such as governments. Is your government exploring this? Would it be a good move in tough times? Comment by following the link back to the blog here.

All the best,

Jerry