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July 15, 2003
eGovernment in the Kyrgyz Republic
I had a unique opportunity to meet with Almaz Bakenov, an attache with the Embassy of the Kyrgyz Republic and speak with him about eGovernment. Almaz has a Masters degree in Computer Science and one in Electrical Engineering as well. Our conversation focused on four areas of eGovernment:
- IT as a driver in economic development - IT can provide an opportunity for economic development in underdeveloped countries. Kyrgyzstan has few natural resources and has to rely on its workforce, which is surprisingly well educated, to drive economic growth.
- IT as a driver in societal growth and change - IT can provide information and communication more cheaply than many alternatives. For example, wiring schools and libraries is expensive, but it provides access to information and knowledge that changes society (we can debate whether for good or bad).
- IT as a means of managing society - this is the classic eGovernment angle and focuses on how to use IT to run the government and, in a democracy, let citizens understand what government is doing and impact the way it operates.
- Infrastructure - the other three depend on this and infrastructure is a classic role for government. When the US was young one of the first public works projects was a turnpike. In the 21st century, networks are as important as roads and in most countries, government is the only one who can afford to build them.
We talked a great deal about economic development since that provides resources for the other initiatives, if its successful. There's a waltz required however, since you can't just do one without also working on the others. I enjoyed my talk with Almaz very much and think he has some interesting challenges ahead as he tries to work through all this.
11:19 AM | Recommend This | Print This
Munich Goes with Linux
At OSCON, Mitch Kapor predicted that the public sector would lead the way in moving Linux to the desktop. USA Today has a long article that details some of the behind the scenes movement in Munich's recent decision to put Linux on 14,000 desktops. Its interesting that this wasn't a decision made on cost. Indeed the winning bid, by IBM and SuSE, was almost $12M over the Microsoft bid. This was more about choice, future direction and out-year costs than it was about the immediate price.
08:09 AM | Recommend This | Print This
IT Does So Matter!
I recently wrote about a Harvard Business Review article by Nicholas Carr called Why IT Doesn't Matter Anymore. My review focused on the idea that IT commoditization brings with it an increased role for operational excellence on the part of IT staffs. An article on ComputerWorld, entitled "IT Does So Matter!" reports interviews with four CIOs and their responses to Carr's article. The focus of that article is on innovation. I love this quote from Andrew McAfee (also of Harvard Business School):
Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School McAfee: It's a matter of whether we're talking about IT enhancing productivity or competition. The telephone has made us able to get more done in a day. Has the phone continued to radically affect the competitive balance among companies? No. That's Nick's point. Some kinds of IT fall into that category. For example, e-mail. We all have it; we all use it. But it's not competition-changing, so overinvesting in it is not a great idea. The bases of competition revolve around other things. [But] there are industries where technologies are fundamentally important. Dell has an IT business-process automation infrastructure that really works. If you don't have one of those, do you have a hope of competing in that industry? And even if you want to put one of those in place, there will be a really big difference in how successful you are vs. another company, because it's tough organizational change in a technology wrapper. We're not equally good at doing it. If we find ourselves competing in an industry where these kinds of systems are important, then IT matters like crazy.
Later in the article, Paul Strassmann, acting CIO at NASA, points out that anyone could have bought a Teradata system from NCR years ago at the same time that Wal-Mart did (in fact many probably did). That didn't make them Wal-Mart. My OSCON Wrap-Up makes the point that in a world of commodity software, its what you do with it that counts and that's Strassmann's point as well.
Even though my review focused on the red zone, its important not to overlook the green zone. You'll do yourself and your business a disservice if you just assume the green zone is empty. IT managers and CIO especially have to work closely with business managers to help them see where IT can be used to change the business. That's innovative, green-zone work.