Somewhat contrary to what the title might suggest, the main purpose of this post is to empathise with others who have had frustration in regard to delivering ICT solutions within Australian government departments.
I’ve only been paddling in the public sector whirlpool for the past six years or so, and before that I was working ’on the other side’ in smaller private sector agencies. That said, the inherent pains of government ICT projects - or any progressive, technology-driven government projects for that matter - don’t seem to discriminate.
The senseless business processes, workflows and approval lines; the complex (and sometimes hostile) bureaucracy; the apparent over-supply of dried-up and institutionalised staff; the micro-managers who are also self-proclaimed web design experts; the political game-playing by everyone from the CEO to the cleaner - and of course, the stock-standard ‘approval by committee’ regime which has been delaying and de-railing projects for years. Speaking of the latter, I can even remember my own dad complaining about committee-driven red tape at the (then) Federal Department of Aviation when I was only nine years-old.
So pardon my cynicism folks, but sometimes it can really make you want to put all your resourcefulness into action and find the tallest ledge to jump off.
Stephen Collins from www.acidlabs.org recently wrote a great article which stirred a thoughtful batch of responses and subsequently provided me with a good dose of inspiration for this post. In this article, Stephen and his readers discussed the notion of a ‘just do it’ approach to government IT projects, characterised by smaller, iterative and more timely outputs rather than trying to deliver a far larger amount of project work all at once. My perception is that Stephen feels that smaller steps and incremental, staged ICT outputs are fundamentally more likely to agree with the government ‘way of life’ while still addressing (to varying degrees) the needs of those end-users who will be using the final ICT product/service.
I agree with Stephen on this.
However, I think it’s unforgivable that most Australian government departments don’t appear to be embracing progressive ICT (including Web 2.0) in earnest. In fact, it’s downright frustrating and disappointing, and I know many people share these feelings.
Despite the passion of committed ICT professionals in the government sector, are we always going to be classified as insignificant pieces of the complex government puzzle? Is our expertise ever going to be heard in whole, and not just in part?
Or, will we live to see a new wave of thinking (demonstrated by a complete overhaul of government culture, resources and management techniques) which subsequently begs for passionate and highly skilled staff, progressive thinking, best practice, common sense and creativity in ICT development?
It’s sure nice to dream. Unfortunately, I’d say we’ll all be living in space stations on Mars before the latter happens.
Rob
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