Class 2 - Technology Failures in Government

We warmed up the class with an informal pop quiz/discussion about the elements of the Leavitt Diamond. The Leavitt Diamond on one framework to evaluate technology systems and projects. Remember our goal is to create public sector professionals who are tech smart and can ask the right questions. Two other frameworks covered tonight were the four ways to measure Value: 1) Time, 2) Cost, 3) Quality, and 4) Quantity. The other framework was Michael Hammer's Seven Principles of Business Process Reenginneering (BPR). Popular in the early 1990's, BPR in the "Reengineering Government: Making Government More Efficient" (9/27/07 Daily News, http://www.dailynews.lk/2007/09/27/fea02.asp) discussed how BPR is currently applicable to the public sector, such as online license renewal. In the "Show and Tell" part of our class, John shared an article about flooding in Uganda keeping kids out of school and the role of technology. In the education and technology related sidebar discussion, the "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC) initiative by Nicholas Negroponte. Our guest speaker tonight was Martin Lind, Director of Product Development from the NTI Group. Martin shared the Connect CTY (https://www.nticonnectcty.com/about/CTY/home.html) mass communication system. We often can learn more from studying failure than successes. In this case, we broke into small groups to dissect the Washington Post article "The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't: $170 Million Bought An Unusable Computer System" (8/18/06). Till next time...Thomas

Class 1 - Class Overview (Govt and Tech)

Our first of 10 classes was tonight. We set the table for the class by asking ourselves "why are we here" and "what do we want from the class". Our class is quite diverse with most being working professionals in the public sector. I counted representation by at least 4 cities. Our class is not designed to be a technical class but designed to meet the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) standards to understand 1) ways in which policy making and analysis substantially related to or are affected by information technology, 2) strategic management of knowledge and information in organizations and associated systems, and 3) oversight and supervision of information management and managers. Tonight we covered the Leavitt Diamond, a framework for understanding organizational behavior under change with technology. The four interlinked elements of the Leavitt Diamond are technology, people skills, organizational structure, and department/business function. A change in any one of these areas impacts the others. We took the Personal Strengths Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) to learn about building productive working relationships. As public sector professionals, the SDI can help us learn more about "what makes us tick" and "what makes others tick". We will use the SDI in later classes to understand the skill of "borrowing" to communicate in a way that resonates with how others prefer to receive information and how to manage conflict. Till next time....Thomas