Digital Bureaucracy of America and the West

Information technology is the tool for e-governance. It is considered as the panacea of the developing world against the myriad of its problems.  It is right to an extent. In the developed countries, electricity bill can be paid by few mouse clicks. Whereas in developing countries like India - supplier of the highest number of software engineers in the world, a customer has to fall in line for hours, to pay the electricity bill.

Information technology is an ever growing and ever changing technological space. Its changes can be better projected now than a few decades ago. So that better software solution foreseeing the future adaptability can be developed now. For the same reason, late comers to e-governance are lucky.

When IT was in its infancy, developed countries embraced it. Newly developed computer software solutions eliminated millions of low-level jobs. One can find such applications in any agency, bureau or department in local, city, state or federal level. They are called collectively as ‘legacy systems.'

E-governance is also a white elephant in the developed countries. It drains the taxpayer's money unknowingly.  

how ?

Changes in the process or technology are very slow in government. When ordinary people are so used to the digital services provided by the private sector, decision-makers in the government are forced to digitalize their business. They implemented various computer applications to achieve that goal. Agency might have hired external contractors to do this. These consultants are brainstormed to know the process they resolve. They will never have a big picture of the agency they serve. After the new system is rolled out for business, usually some consultants are absorbed to the state.

After some time, another contractor steps in, to build another system, for the same agency. Thus over a period, every agency, bureau, local governments, possess many systems. Occasionally, the department does not know, the whereabouts of the application, they maintain.

As long as these systems help to do the business, agencies are happy. Thumb rule - "don't mess it up as long as it runs." An array of state employees is added to payroll to support these new systems. Consultants are regularly hired because the maintenance will be much easier if the same people designed the system is around. Everything is costing heavily on the state exchequer.

If anyone carefully examines these systems, few things are evident.

1. Most of the systems are built around same demographic data, for example, Drivers License,   Date of birth, Social Security Number or State Issued Id.

2. Multiple copies of same demographic information could be found in the relational database systems used by different applications.

3. There could be several batch processes to transfer the data which is parsed upon reception.

4. Most of the application will have the redundant source code to process the same information and administrative tasks.

5. Infrastructure requirements and the resource personnel to drive this inefficient system is a huge liability to the taxpayer.

In some cases, this cost is recouped, from the customer of this service directly, which is also the taxpayer.

During President Truman's presidency, former President Herbert Hoover ran an effort to reorganize the government which he could not do himself two decades ago.  $11 worth effort was required to expedite $10 from federal treasury according to some studies conducted those days.  So in this Information Technology era,  the institutions who entered into e-governance in its early days, should think like these two former presidents thought, a few decades ago.

What is the solution: Consolidation.

Agencies should view their business as a whole and design new system over a period. Never port the existing application into new technological or infrastructural environments. Being old wine in the new wineskin, it might cause more harm.

One example is CalPERS - one of the largest pension fund.  At the time of my|CalPERS, the team consolidated 49 systems and converted 90 databases into an integrated solution. One could argue that they had enough money at their disposal to consolidate legacy applications. But CalPERS might have spent more money and effort to maintain the cumbersome applications if this system was never built.