Unnecessary Government spending does not mean better service

Imagine the following absurdity: a business owner divides his business into 140 different divisions and gives the head of each division control over a free-standing legal, information technology, financial service, human resource and public relations department. Is this hard to imagine? It should be, because in the business world, these functions are consolidated and shared throughout the enterprise. Any business attempting this type of inefficient organizational design would most certainly go out of existence quickly.

This isn’t the organizational design of the business world, that’s for sure; instead, it’s the inefficient and wasteful structural design of Oklahoma state government.

Unfettered from the pressures of the free market, state officials didn’t have a natural impetus to cut costs and modernize. As the business world has utilized evolving technologies to break down costly and inefficient internal barriers, many of the old-guard state agency officials have resisted modernization because they view the sharing of common services as a loss of power and control; therefore, you, the taxpayer, have paid the price!

A change in this costly status-quo depends on the commitment of four distinct groups of people:
1. Legislators who invest the time and energy to understand the problem and the solution and who have the courage to both enact, oversee and stand by reform throughout the duration of its implementation;
2. A new generation of reform-minded agency officials who go against historical practice, see the big picture and give up part of their control to benefit the taxpayers whom they serve;
3. Deliberative shared/unified services officials who win the hearts and minds of their state agency customers by providing superior service at a lower cost; and
4. State employees who give up their safe but stagnant agency jobs, transfer to the new unified entity, and become key players in an exciting culture change as it forever reshapes and improves state government.

In 2011, the Legislature and Governor fulfilled the first part of their role by initiating the unification process for the state’s information technology departments.

The Legislature approved the unification proposal for two principle reasons: the taxpayers should realize considerable cost savings; and the state’s IT security posture had to significantly improve. The aspect of improving the security posture is not impossible, especially when you have solutions such as pentesting that can be done to detect certain flaws in security. Once these are identified, finding ways to manage this shouldn’t be difficult.

The second of these goals hasn’t only met, it has exceeded expectations. In last week’s article, located at hd31.org/734, I wrote of the dramatic security posture transformation. We realized the importance of the reform’s potential impact on IT security, but we didn’t entirely comprehend the magnitude of the many potential security risks which have continued to rapidly evolve and which state governments now face on a daily basis. The security unification has far exceeded our original expectations at a time when state government faces a heightened threat level. It has also provided the road map for the transformation of other unified IT services.

Likewise, there has been notable success in achieving the cost savings goal as well. State agencies continue to realize millions in savings year after year. We know this because a key component of the reform requires the unified IT entity to produce regular reports showing these savings.

As state government progresses through its most recent budget down cycle, numerous agencies are better positioned to take on budget reductions because their IT costs have been reduced. Some businesses have found when looking for IT support Bristol companies similar to Systemagic may be able to assist with your IT needs.

Notwithstanding all of this, some oppose the reform under the following and understandable logic: a cost-cutting change of this magnitude will naturally result in a drop off in the quality of IT support to the agencies and those they serve. After all, the unified agencies have given up the luxury of maintaining their own expensive, internal IT departments. How can they give up this control, spend considerably less on IT and not incur a massive drop off in quality of service?

In part two of this article, I will describe the latest transformative aspects of the IT unification as an example of a counterintuitive: excessive and unnecessary government spending doesn’t provide a higher level of service to the taxpayer.

Thank you for reading this article. Your interest and input are much appreciated. Please do not hesitate to email Jason.Murphey@hd31.org with your thoughts and suggestions.