The Tough Times Project:

Shaping the Initiatives that Will Reshape the World

 

• Join a senior-level "cross-boundary" community to share emerging knowledge about IT-related moves for tough times (where "cross-boundary" engages federal, state, local, and international participants including general managers, technology managers, and political leaders)
• Gain support in assessing how these moves could be adapted and applied in your own institutional, economic, social, and political setting
• Join as an individual participant or as an institution (see below)

 

Project Goals and Structure

Times are tough. We’re in the worst economy since the Depression. People are turning to governments for protection, but governments have no money. Our politics have been plagued by bitterly unproductive conflicts, stalemates, and mistakes.

At the same time, we know that Web 2.0 tools and recent elections have brought new possibilities to the fore. We know that, in the past, tough times have fostered innovations that reshaped the world as the economy recovered. In the 1930s, governments redesigned how markets were regulated in response to the Depression. In the 1940s, women began to assume fundamentally different economic roles in response to World War II.

In today's crisis, some "hunkering down" to defend budgets, staff, and mission is essential. At the same time, however, for some of our most important leaders, the best defense will include a strong offense. Taking advantage of today's crisis, these leaders will turn pain into a better future.

If “hunkering down” is not your best or only strategy, what can you do?

The “Tough Times Project" is collaborating with institutions and individuals to help to answer this issue. Working with senior leaders in government and a global array of public and private sector partners, the project will identify leading examples of technology-enabled innovation; more importantly, it will analyze how those examples can be adapted and applied in diverse social, economic, and political settings. The majority of the project, in recognition of the financial and environmental barriers to travel, will be conducted on-line.

We are now offering opportunities for individuals and institutions to support and learn from the Project. Online participation will extend at least through December 2009. An in-person session is planned for June 2010. As findings evolve, they will be reflected in a series of keynote speeches and regional workshops outside Harvard (organized by e.Republic). Attendees at these (free) sessions will receive papers summarizing project findings (first the interim and ultimately the final results); they will also be referred to exemplary case studies and follow-up resources available online.

The Tough Times Project will be organized largely around moves that governments can take to improve the flow of work and how that work is coordinated and governed.

We will explore four moves to improve the flow of work:

1. Service delivery/engagement: as in, the “no wrong door” implementations in Canada; the 311 system of Denver; and the civic engagement strategies of the Obama campaign.
2. Enterprise integration: as in, IT consolidation in Michigan and elsewhere; and province-wide standardization for ERP implementations in Nova Scotia, Canada.
3. Cross-boundary transformation: as in, the development of interoperable electronic health records; and a variety of “cloud computing” services provided at a scale far larger than internally possible for any single government.
4. Infrastructure extension: as in, the broadband investments of the Economic Stimulus package; and in the work of the Netherlands to standardize financial data for real-time transparency and oversight.

We will also explore four moves to improve coordination and governance:

5. Feedback/transparency: as in, the release of data for public analysis by the District of Columbia; and the recently-established Recovery.gov initiative of the Obama administration.
6. Massive collaboration: as in, the Diplopedia project of the U.S. Department of State; and the Peer-to-Patent work of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
7. Open standards: as in, the need to reconcile multiple approaches to identity authentication; and recent experiments with open source office applications over the “cloud.”
8. New authority: as in, institutional support for Maritime Domain Awareness; and the evolution of shared staffing via telecommuting and videoconferencing, along with standardized agreements on transfer pricing.

In analyzing the above, the project will explore how examples could be adapted for different local conditions. We expect that online participants will engage from 2 to 5 hours per week in completing the reading and analysis required.

Individuals and institutions participating in this project will benefit from:

• Extended interaction with an influential "cross-boundary" community; the work of the community will be facilitated by Jerry Mechling, Faculty Chair of the Project. For other members see the list below.
• An opportunity to contribute to the project's report and to apply lessons back to home environments and interests; any institution considering a "tough times" move should find this project an extremely cost-effective source of knowledge and learning.
• An opportunity to advance best practice through case examples and resource materials (reports, plans and budgets, RFPs, etc.); follow-up resources will be selected and organized to make the implementation of “tough times” initiatives more successful for all.
• Public recognition: participation in the project along with specific ideas and materials contributed to the project's website and/or publications will be recognized by references on the website, on project publications, and/or through the multiple public presentations to be given on the project.

Participation Options

Individuals can join as observers (at no cost) or as participant/analysts. Institutions can join in a number of different roles.

Observers. Those interested in lower levels of engagement can sign up to be Observers. Observers will receive project updates, surveys, and selected survey results, and will be able to receive and comment on project blogs. They will be collaborating with an unusually interesting "cross-boundary" community including CXOs and well as CIOs, and peers from federal, state, local, and international settings. They will not, however, be part of the weekly reading and dialog, or projects that participant/analysts will work on with others and project faculty to apply lessons to real-world problems While there is no fee for Project Observers, registration is required in order to receive project communications.

Participant/analysts in the online workshop. The online workshop will run for thirty weeks from May through December. Participant/analysts will be expected to complete reading and discussion assignments requiring from 2 to 5 hours per week. Those completing a final paper -- designed to analyze how ideas from the project can be applied to a problem of real-world interest -- will receive feedback on their work along with a certificate of completion.

For participation opportunities, please contact:

Professor Jerry Mechling
Lecturer in Public Policy and Faculty Chair, Leadership for a Networked World Program
617-495-3036
jerry_mechling@harvard.edu

 

Members of the Tough Times Project include: PK Agarwal, CTO, California; Hon. Reg Alcock, former President of the Treasury Board, Canada; Michael Armstrong, CIO, Corpus Christi, Texas; Phil Bertolini, Deputy County Executive, Oakland County, Michigan; Claudia Boldman, Chief Planning and Strategy Officer, Information Technology Division, Massachusetts; Aneesh Chopra, Secretary of Technology, Virginia; Sharon Dawes, Center for Technology in Government, SUNY Albany; Karen Evans, former Administrator for E-Gov and IT, U.S. Office of Management and Budget; Stephen Fletcher, CIO, Utah; Maryantonnet Flumian, former head of Service Canada; Alexander Hunziker, University of Bern, Switzerland; Stephen Jennings, CIO, Harris County, Texas; Randy Johnson, County Executive, Hennepin County, Minnesota; Gopal Kapur, Center for Project Management, California; Gopal Khanna, CIO, Minnesota; Timothy Loewenstein, Supervisor, Buffalo County, Nebraska; Lisa Schlosser, U.S. EPA; Jane Smith-Patterson, e-NC Authority, North Carolina; and Teri Takai, CIO, California.