- 4 Quick Fixes for the Procurement Dragon

Yes we can!

Almost everyone who deals with government – internally or externally – is frustrated by the “procurement dragon”.  Procurement seem to take forever and are one of the most bureaucracy-laced processes in all of governing.   In these days of innovation and the flourishing of the startup culture, procurement processes seem to be an anachronistic throwback.

Furthermore, the convoluted purchasing process only seems to benefit large corporations who have the legions of attorneys and technical staff to respond to RFPs and negotiate the maze.

Purchasing practice is steeped in a web of local and state laws, regulations and executive orders, so they’re not easy to change.   There are good reasons for the present procurement practices, and I’ll mention those at the end of this post.   But first, can innovation and a culture of agile government survive in the present purchasing jungle?

I suggest four quick fixes, some of which are already in place in many governments:

1. Direct Purchase.   This is a direct purchasing mechanism for small procurements – say procurements under $5000.   This would allow a department director or senior manager to directly purchase a good or service from a company without going through more formal purchasing processes.   A manager might purchase a smartphone app and associated database for use by field crews, or a couple of tablet computers for testing.  There still need to be limits on this mechanism, so I’m not issuing 20 direct purchases to the same company in a year, for example, and to make sure the vendor has a valid business license.
2. Roster and invitation to bid.   With this mechanism, companies would be pre-qualified and put on a roster for bids.   A city, for example, might set up a roster for “web applications”.  Companies who want to be on that roster would provide a minimal amount of information – ownership, business address, business license, etc.   And when the city needs a “web application” for a specific purpose, e.g. to accept photos of graffiti from citizens, it could issue a simple, two-or-three page  “invitation to bid” with its requirements and allow companies on the roster to bid.  Typically these bids would also be restricted to procurements of a certain size, say $50,000.
3. Piggy-back on an existing contract.   This mechanism is already widely used.   If a company already has a contract on the Federal Government’s GSA (General Services Administration) schedule, or the Western States’ Contracting Alliance  (WSCA – commonly called “wisca”), any jurisdiction which joins the alliance and authorizes itself to purchase can purchase at the terms and conditions specified by GSA or WSCA.
4. Credit card.   Most government agencies give their trusted department directors and senior employees credit cards.   These are most often used for travel and similar expenses, but they certainly could be used (depending on local ordinance or law) for small purchases, again, up to a limit of, say, several thousand dollars.
5. Budget.   As an adjunct to these four mechanisms, a city, county or department also needs budget to make the procurement.  Perhaps every department or government should have an “innovation fund”.

Using mechanisms like these, governments could quickly and easily procure innovative technologies, goods and services to help them become more efficient and effective.

Implementing these mechanisms requires a great deal of trust – trust by elected officials in their department directors, and trust by those department directors in their senior managers.    There are many cases where that trust has been abused, for example, by a manager purchasing good/services from friends or by making procurements and receiving kickbacks.  Examples include the controversy which engulfed recently appointed federal CIO Vivek Kundra in 2009, or these Seattle Public Utilities customer service representatives in 2012.  So my “quick fixes” for procurment also require diligent oversight and auditing by the appropriate authorities.

Finally, the present procurement practices in most jurisdictions are not the results of “bureaucrats run wild” with regulations, forms and requirements.   They came into being because of widespread abuse of purchasing in the 19^th Century, where Mayors and other elected officials gave jobs to friends, contracts to cronies and similarly greased their own pockets using the procurement process.

“Good government” advocates instituted reforms such as civil service to protect most employees from the winds of politics, and purchasing laws which required specifications and open competition.   These practices still should be followed for major procurements to keep a “level playing field” for competition for the work.

Over the years, however, city councils and legislatures and county commissions have added twists and turns to procurement, largely to correct past injustices or for social engineering.  Do contracts go to firms owned by white men?  Then let’s add a provision for subcontracts to historically underused businesses (HUBs) – women and minority-owned business.   Are we angered by human rights abuses in ______ (fill in the blank, e.g. Burma, Iran, China, etc.)?  Then let’s add a regulation so we don’t  do any business with a company with business interests or a manufacturing plant in those places.   Are we upset that some companies pollute the air and water with their factories or other facilities?  Then let’s eliminate them from bidding on contracts (or have our pension funds divest themselves of the company’s stock).  Do we want to encourage economic development in our City (county, State, or even the entire United States)?   Then let’s add regulations to give preference to firms headquartered or with operations in those places.

I’m not saying these practices are wrong and should all be eliminated.   I’m pointing out that there are reasons the purchasing process is so complicated, and it will take a lot of thought and careful consideration to “unwind the maze”.

In the meantime, let’s implement the “quick fixes”.

- Overpromise and Underdeliver?

Information Technology Projects

Why do we consistently promise too much and then fail to deliver on information technology and other government projects?

The project mantra is clear: “scope, schedule, budget”. But how we actually do the planning, estimating and getting approval to start a project … well that’s the horse of a different color.

We promise the moon – “Project Widget will be the best thing for this department since sliced bread – it not only will slice bread, but will knead the dough and grow the yeast and self-bake itself”. Then, of course, instead of delivering sliced bread we might end up delivering half-a-loaf, or maybe an electric knife or perhaps a chopped salad. This problem: getting the project’s scope right.

Then there is schedule. Of course every project is a “priority”. We’re going to get it done in the “next nine months”. Why “nine” months? Because that’s less than a calendar and budget year, but it is longer than saying it will be done tomorrow, which is patently ludicrous. But nine months is also ludicrous for anything other than incubating a baby – and even babies usually take years of planning and preparation. Furthermore, in the public sector almost every procurement has to be done by RFP, and preparing a request for proposals alone, plus contract negotiations with a successful vendor, cannot be done in less than a year. And the schedule needs to include minor components such as business process discovery and the work of executing on the project.

Then there’s budget. Generally we’ll make a pretty good estimate of the actual real cost of the project. The usual mistake is for someone (fill-in-the-blank – “department director”, “Mayor”, “county commissioner”, “state legislator”, “grand phooba”) to say “we only have x number of dollars”. So, as the next step, the project budget shrinks to the magic budget number, while scope and schedule are left unchanged. And generally the “magic budget number” is determined by some highly scientific means such as the amount of money left over in a department budget at the end of a fiscal year, or the amount of money the City of Podunk Center spent on a similar project, or the size of a property tax increase which voters might be reasonably persuaded to pass.

Why do we plan projects this way in the public sector?

First, we are largely transparent and accountable in government. That’s really good news, because we – government – are stewards of taxpayer and ratepayer money. Oh, I suppose we can hide some small boondoggles, but there are too many whisteblowers and too much media scrutiny to hide a major failure. That’s not true in the private sector, where projects costing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars are failures or near failures, often hidden from public or shareholder view, with wide-ranging and sometimes near catastrophic economic effects. Some public examples include Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner or the Microsoft Courier tablet (gee, will anyone every produce a Windows tablet?) The federal government’s project failures are paramount examples of both poor project planning/execution and admirable transparency with an eye to reform.

Here are my top reasons for project mis-estimation:

• Lack of rigorous project management. Project managers are crucial. But good project managers are also expensive. Government doesn’t grow or pay PMs well. Too often we assign project managers as the “last man standing” – whoever is left over when everyone else is doing the work. And we are woefully short on training – usually training and education are the first things cut from public budgets during recessions.
• Eagerness to please. Everyone in a project is eager to please a boss – the County Executive, the Governor, a legislator, a department director. How often do we invoke “the Governor is really interested in … (fill in the blank related to the current project)”. Projects need to stand on their own for business value, as well as be of interest to the elected official presently in office.
• Jadedness. Knowing the budget process described above, we’ll often pad estimates – make the budget larger and the schedule longer, knowing they will be cut. Then, of course, decision-makers and leaders can also play that game, figuring there is padding, and therefore cut all the deeper.
• The constraints of the budget and election cycles. Typical budget cycles in government are one year. Election cycles can be two years, and at most four years. Unless elected officials and department directors really take a long-range view, these facts lead to short-range think and results, just as stock price and quarterly profits drive the private sector.

And here are my top cures:

• Hiring professional project managers. Frankly, this means, for large projects, we should usually hire professional PMs or firms from outside government. As a side benefit, such outside firms can also help train, mentor and grow government employees so they become good PMs.
• Good executive sponsorship. The executive sponsor for a project needs to be the government official with “skin in the game” – the owner of the “business”, whose job may be on the line if the project fails, as well as the official owning the business. A smartgrid project’s sponsor will be the electrical utility’s director of distribution and generation networks. A computer-aided dispatch system’s sponsor will be the Assistant Fire or Police Chief in charge of the 911 center and dispatch.
• External quality assurance. QA is essentially a “watchdog” on projects, speaking truth to power, and highlighting areas of risk and opportunities for improvement as the project proceeds.
• Small projects and quick wins. If possible, any large project should really be a series of small projects with quick wins. In the case of a computer-aided dispatch system, for example, the smaller projects could include installing computers in police vehicles, implementing automated vehicle location, implementing a records management system, and implementing the CAD software itself. Of course there is no way to build a sewage treatment plant serving a city of half-a-million as a series of small projects, but most IT projects can be decomposed.
• Transparency. Perhaps the most important component is openness and honesty for everyone involved – project managers being honest with sponsors, technical staff being honest about their workloads, department directors looking at their portfolio of projects and putting the lower priority ones on hold so the higher priority ones have the resources for success. The federal government leads the way in transparency, with its public “dashboard” for information technology spending and projects.

What’s amazing is that, despite everything I’ve said above, we get an amazing amount of great projects completed. At the City of Seattle, we’ve tracked all our major projects. Since 2006, we’ve tracked 77 project through 2,071 project dashboard reports. We’ve found that, when they are completed, 75% of them are within budget. Of those 77 projects, 32% have been on time and 57% have delivered the scope they promised (i.e. a whole loaf of sliced bread). Clearly this record reflects our priorities – budget is the most important consideration, with scope second, and schedule lowest.

Not a bad record when compared with Standish group project failure statistics, but plenty of room for improvement.

- FUD

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt

For people who work hard to make government work, we live in frightening, uncertain times.   Even small messages and signals to the people who do the day-to-day work are important.

Recently we had an employee in my department (Department of Information Technology – DoIT, City of Seattle) whose card key was shut off to get to a certain floor after hours. It was inadvertent and an oversight – we were just trying to remove after hours access for anyone who really didn’t need it.  “Enhancing physical security”. 

But this employee immediately became frightened for his job – “are they planning to lay me off?” was the first thought he had.

Even small signals are important. 

I try to smile and greet each employee as I see them walking through the hallways or in work spaces.  I am very intentional about this.

First, I have a genuine respect and admiration for the people in DoIT – and around the City of Seattle – who make government run.  But also I just enjoy talking to people and hearing their stories. I know the first name of every employee in DoIT, and many other IT employees throughout City government, and I’m genuinely concerned about them, their families and their work.

Sometimes I forget, however, and I’m lost in thought, and I walk down the hallway scowling and forgetting to say hello. Employees can interpret that as “the boss is mad at me”, when, really, I’m just thinking about an especially difficult meeting I recent had, or a thorny problem I have to solve.

These are frightening times.

City government revenues are down, positions are being cut, and employees are being laid off. We have more difficulties coming down the road, and there is a significant amount of FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt in the air. All you have to do is read Publicola, the local scandal sheet (now known as a “blog”) to see the facts and hear the rumors about this.

Yes, I know that I and other department directors will be faced with more cuts and more difficult decisions in the coming months. I am really hoping that the next budget process will be the last time we are cutting and we can stabilize the government after that. I’m a “glass half full” guy.

Nevertheless I lose a lot of sleep and spend a lot of time worrying about these issues and the effects of cuts on employees and their families.  And, even more importantly, on the health and well-being of the 600,000 people who live in Seattle and depend upon their government for safety, utilities and quality of life.

My lost sleep is irrelevant, of course – if I’m not here, the facts of the budget situation are still the same, and the cuts will still come, but it will just be someone else making the decision.

So if I scowl at you as I walk down the hallway, please don’t take it personally. I’m just puzzling over that next difficult decision.

- Transclucent to the User

GEM Team with Mayor

On Monday night, December 8th, the Seattle Police Department started to use Microsoft Exchange/Outlook for electronic mail. This culminated moving more than 11,000 City of Seattle employees, over 12,400 e-mailboxes, and 900 BlackBerrys from an older e-mail technology to the Exchange 2007 product. All of it “translucent to the user”.

I’ve previously blogged about project management, and specifically identifying and reducing risks in large technology projects (“the P-I test“). With this entry I’m highlighting somewhat different project management practices.  We used certain techniques to reduce the impact of the technology changes on front-line City workers such as firefighters, accountants, and street maintenance staff.

(In case you think I’m just tooting our own horn, I am, but I’ve also blogged about my biggest project failure and you can read about that here, too!). 

We called this e-mail migration project GEM, for GroupWise to Exchange Migration.

Not only was the project on-time, under-budget and delivering all of its objectives, but there were very few whimpers from most City employees at this major change in their work lives. How was such a change so seamless?  

Electronic mail is, arguably, the most important technology used by workers in almost any company today, whether government or private.  It has supplanted the telephone and even the desktop computer as the key tool for many workers to be productive and efficient. Decisions which might take days or weeks without e-mail can be debated and handled rapidly with e-mail communication. Management of front-line projects (streets, water, electricity), debates and decisions on policies, notification of events, press releases, scheduling, all occur with this tool. Most importantly, it is a primary way for constituents and customers to communicate with City workers and elected officials and the way for those officials to coordinate the City’s response. 

Of course, when anything is this valuable in your life, you are extraordinarily skittish when it is NOT available or about to be significantly changed.  Managing this “culture change” – in the working habits of thousands of City workers - is the elusive key to success in a technology project.

I won’t get into the current debate (war?) about use of internal e-mail versus a hosted service, or whether Google’s g-mail is better or more cost effective than the Microsoft product set. Because e-mail is so important in our work lives, and because many people use Outlook at home (or in a previous job) anyway, it was the right choice for the City of Seattle. Because many e-mail messages are sensitive, and since I have a skilled and dedicated set of employees to manage and operate it, we would not have it hosted or managed elsewhere. Microsoft Exchange/Outlook is an established product, well-supported, used by 65% or so of the organizations in America today.  And many many other applications (purchasing or human resource systems, billing and customer service systems) are written to use Outlook/Exchange for communication.

Here are the elements of success for GEM:

• Strong executive leadership. Mayor Greg Nickels fully supported this change, and every department director knew it. The nine-member Seattle City Council voted to fund the project ($4.9 million) after considerable, reasoned debate. These elected officials were able to articulate the rationale for making this change. This support helped immensely in cooperation for training, scheduling and acceptance throughout the Government.
• Strong project leadership. My deputy department director sponsored the project – she has formal and informal ties to many line departments, and she’s managed many brick-and-mortar projects (e.g. building Parks community centers). She chose a strong project director who is a hard-nosed negotiator, and a skilled project manager who pays attention to both people and details.
• Support. We chose, via competitive bid, a knowledgeable private partner – Avanade – to give us advice, skilled support and knowledge transfer. Avanade had helped many companies with similar conversions in the past, and performed in an outstanding manner for us.
• Training. We gave employees a chance to purchase Microsoft Office 2007 via the home use program, and 2,000 of them took that chance, thereby learning the product suite at home. A month prior to each department’s conversion, we told them how to prepare, for example, by deleting old e-mail and taking training. We offered training in classes, video and reading material for anyone from heavy e-mail users to people who just needed a refresher on Outlook.
• Communicate communicate communicate. We told all 12,000 employees at the beginning of 2009 what we planned to do (“to” them!)  One month out from their department’s conversion, we told them how to get trained and ready.  Two weeks out we communicated details via their management chain and via e-mail message. The day before conversion, each employee had a sheet of instructions placed on their chair. The day after conversion, technology staff chosen for their great “deskside manner” walked the halls and cubicles to answer questions and solve problems.  We had a skilled service desk / help desk and a special e-mail contact point. And all along we had a detailed, fact-and-fun-filled internal website with information, training, FAQ’s, and links to more resources.
• Skilled City employees. We already had a highly competent help desk, capable desktop support staff and experienced engineers supporting servers and storage and messaging system.  We trained and leveraged this skilled and motivated set of employees, coupled with Avanade, to do the technical work on the project.
• Finally – and perhaps this is most important, we drafted departments into the effort. Each department had at least one and usually a team of people who worked with the GEM project team to customize the training and conversion plan for that department’s unique needs. Police patrol officers use e-mail differently than Parks groundskeepers who are different than budget analysts who are different than electrical utility engineers. These “extended teams” in departments not only participated in the planning, but became natural advocates for overcoming problems and socializing the change in each department.

Leadership, communication, user representation, strong private partner, skilled and motivated technical staff – a GEM of a project, translucent to the users!

- Politics and Technology

Mayor Greg Nickels

On Friday August 21st, Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle conceded defeat in our 2009 primary election. In an eight-way race for Mayor, he came in third. Joe Mallahan and Mike McGinn, both running their first races for elected office, received more votes than Greg in the August 18th primary.  The general election is November 3rd.  Come January 1st 2010, there will be a new Mayor in Seattle.  As CIO and a Department Director, I work directly for the Mayor.  On January 1st, either I’ll have a new boss, or Seattle will have a new CTO/CIO and I’ll have a lot of free time on my hands.

“Technology is driven by the business need.”   That’s a mantra for CIOs everywhere, whether we work in government , the private sector or at a non-profit.  As a CIO you can work in banking or manufacturing or a federal government agency or in a foundation or at a hospital.  In every case, the primary purpose of your business is not technology, but rather creating a product or delivering a service.  You, as CIO, use technology to make the organization more effective and efficient at its business, to give it a competitive edge.  It’s a wonderful job, CIO. You get learn and understand the business.  In my case, that’s permitting and utilities, emergency management and firefighting, entertainment (Seattle Center, parks) and policing, transportation and land use – all the products and services of the City government of Seattle.

And, as CIO, you are deeply involved in technology, which is full of innovation and constant change as IT moves ever forward.  And the CIO gets to marry the two, bringing the wonders of technology to the business of governing. 

Leaders change everywhere, and often suddenly.  Companies are bought and sold.  Non-profits expand and contract.  Businesses are born and die.  But only in government are your leaders elected, and do you get to watch the fascinating process of political campaigns, the ebb and flow of debates and public forums, the expose’ of news stories and endless mudslinging and chanting of blogs and newspapers and websites.  I have to admit that the vigorous debate and entertainment value of the political process is a significant portion the compensation I receive as Chief Technology Officer in Seattle. 

As Seattle’s CTO/CIO, I’ve not been one who believes technology and politics are separate.  I do NOT believe technology is “above” or “outside” politics.  As a private citizen, outside my job and away from my official duties, I’ve been involved in that political process.  I’ve engaged with candidates for many different offices, exploring a bit of their philosophies about the intersections of politics and governing and technology. 

The march of day-to-day business of Seattle’s City government and the use of technology in government will continue unchanged through this transition between Mayors.  The e-mail will keep flowing, the Seattle Channel will keep broadcasting.  The customer service systems will churn out utility bills and the financial management systems will process receipts and payments and general ledger entries.  We’ll continue stringing fiber optic cable and expanding the intelligent transportation system.  The service desk will answer calls for tech help and there will be dial tone when employees pick up their telephone sets.  The IVR (interactive voice response) will still process phone calls for help from constituents and the website www.seattle.gov will continue to expand and grow with services and information.  

If anything, our challenge continues to be the $72.5 million dollar general fund budget deficit.  Our water and electric utilities face financial challenges as great as the generally funded departments.  The Department of Information Technology will be smaller next year in both budget and staffing.  In developing that budget, I’ve tried to preserve core services plus a little staffing and funding for harnessing the ever-changing landscape of technology for the City’s use. 

Leadership – political leadership from Mayors and Governors and Presidents – does make a difference.  From a technology perspective, we are seeing that in Washington DC today, with a massive thrust towards transparency and accountability via the Internet and web.  We have a President who embraces change by using a BlackBerry and pushing his government to use Web 2.0 tools, blogs and online policy forums.

 Very recently, Seattle City Council member Bruce Harrell, who chairs the Energy and Technology Committee, laid out a vision for embracing similar change in Seattle.   In Seattle, our website www.seattle.gov has twice won “top municipal web portal” (2001, 2006), our municipal TV channel 21 has twice received top honors for municipal television programming for a City our size (2007, 2008) and regularly receives Emmy awards.  We’ve embraced blogs, with an announcement this week of CityLink, multiple blogs on City department sites, linked together into a blog roll-up.  We have police and fire and other departments tweeting the latest news.   We are on the verge of municipal broadband (Mayor Nickels was NATOA’s Broadband 2008 Broadband Hero of the Year).   We have mashups showing Fire 911 calls, transportation traveler’s information and My Neighborhood Map.   We are wrapping up a ten-year, $20 million replacement of Law-Safety-Justice technology systems which has and brought new computer-aided-dispatch systems, computers and cameras to police and fire vehicles, and an integrated police-law-court system.   This year we will finish a wholesale upgrade of the entire City government to Microsoft’s Office 2007, Active Directory and the latest version of Exchange/Outlook.  There are many other accomplishments I could mention.   They are the direct result of having smart city employees, good managers, and enlightened leadership in our departments.

But these investments are also the result of having a City Council and a Mayor who see the value of technology and support its application to the business of government.   It does make a difference who is elected.   Those who want to see government more efficient and effective, and who want to apply technology to improve government, and to make it more accountable and transparent, need to be involved in the political process of electing leaders who will make that happen. 

In Seattle, over the next 50 days, that’s what I’ll be doing.

- A Taxpayer Network Lock Out

San Francisco Locked Out

Original post:  20 July 2008

Terry Childs, a network administrator for the City / County of San Francisco, was arrested last week on four counts of computer fraud. He presently sits in the San Francisco County jail on a $5 million bond. Childs apparently configured the City’s Cisco-based network so he along had the password(s) to control and manage that network. And – seven days after the arrest – the City’s Department of Telecommunications and Information Services is apparently still locked out of its network. The original report of this incident from the San Francisco Chronicle is here. Paul Venezia of Infoworld blogged “insider” information here which he obtained in an e-mail from a SF employee. Although this is an anonymous source, Venezia’s story certain rings true to me. (Note: Although I know Chris Vein, San Francisco CIO, and count him as a friend, I have not discussed this incident with him nor do I have any personal knowledge of the event).

This situation, on the face of it, is both outrageous and troubling. I won’t speculate about why it occurred in San Francisco, other than saying Venezia’s blog has the ring of truth. The larger question: has it happened elsewhere and could in happen again in another public agency or government? And what, if anything, can we do to prevent it?

Has it happened before?
Emphatically and undoubtedly the answer is “yes”. Can I cite a specific example? Not immediately, but there are many many networks – and too many of them are dependent on a single “guru” or talented individual. A couple of caveats are in order here: first, in San Francisco Childs only managed the data communications network of routers and switches – he did NOT have access to applications, databases, and servers. That’s why most City technology functions appear to be working fine. Second, most networks are owned by private companies and businesses. They are NOT in the public eye as the City of San Francisco or the City of Seattle. Security incidents in private networks or even smaller government networks will not be visible to the public or the press.

Could it happen again, elsewhere?
Again, undoubtedly it will. However, I think such an incident in a large network is quite unlikely. Such networks require a number of technical people to cooperatively manage. And the larger the network the more rigorous and formal change management processes are required. Indeed, according to Venezia’s blog, it was a requirement for documentation and change management which might have sent Childs over the edge.

Indicators
Several small points are buried in the news articles: first, Childs allegedly monitored management’s electronic mail. Most technical folks in most organizations have some ability to do this. But most public employees (in my experience) have much higher standards of integrity. And with the availability of e-mail encryption, good security monitoring tools, and teams of employees working together, such monitoring should be rare and declining.
Next, San Francisco recently hired a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), who was actively investigating, monitoring and instituting stronger security policies. Again, this is another factor which probably led to Child’s discovery and arrest. In my personal experience, CISOs have rigorous integrity and concern for processes and policies which protect agency information from harm.
Finally, Childs appears to have a strong ownership of San Francisco’s fiber-wide-area-network, proud of its construction and reliable operation. These are noble attributes which I find in many public technology employees. He also apparently had a disdain for other administrators, staff and management in the department. This is, thankfully, a rare attribute in my experience.

How can we prevent future occurrences?
Some will suggest conducting “background checks” on employees. These are valuable. We’ve been doing them as a matter of course for five years at the City of Seattle’ DoIT. However background checks merely make sure we’re not hiring employees with a history of convictions for driving while intoxicated or a current set of 100 unpaid parking tickets. And they would not have prevented the Childs’ incident. More importantly, when hiring we need to look for employees who are personable and can work as members of a team. Smart employees can be trained for technical skills. In the distant past (1980s), technology employees were very proud of their programming (“networks”, “systems”, “code”), identified it, and defended it intensely (“there aren’t any bugs in that program – I created it and tested it – are you questioning my technical skills?”) Today we can’t afford that – we need employees who are proud of the technology they control, but who have a life and an identity outside of the work they do. Employees who build reliable systems, but realize that it is not the system which matters, but the fact that the 600,000 people of the City of Seattle are safer and happier because their government uses that technology to better serve them. And we also need to employ “best practices” in technology management, hire Chief Information Security Officers, and have employees and technically-astute management who are diligent with change management processes to keep our technology operating reliably.

A Personal Note
A couple of years ago we at the City of Seattle hired a new network administrator. His managers and I fired him after six weeks on the job. Indeed, we should have fired him after two weeks. He displayed a penchant for trying to hack into network switches rather than collaborate with others on the network team to manage them and administer them. The lessons: teamwork is the most valuable attribute in any public employee! You can train and educate folks to be technologists, administrators and managers. Training for teamwork is much harder – you need to look for it when hiring. Second: don’t hesitate to act on bad behavior. And for this, the management San Francisco’s Department of Telecommunications and Information Services should be commended, even if it was late.