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