Dig deep and you’ll find an IT success story!
Word comes from Olympia that the State of Washington won the American Council of Technology’s 2010 Intergovernmental Solutions Award.
Beyond awesome.
For all of my serious and flippant remarks about the $2 billion we spend on technology per biennium, and the unfortunate disaster known as the Washington State Wheeler Data Center, we do have a wide range of genuinely awesome application efforts underway throughout state government.
Allyson Brooks Ph.D., Director/State Historic Preservation Officer, Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, reports the following:
“We won for our agency’s WISAARD website that shares historic site data, archaeological information and contains a statewide archaeological predictive model. The public can only access the historic sites portion of our WEB site but government agencies, tribes and consulting archaeologists can access all the archaeological data through Secure Access Washington once they receive a password from our agency. This is because archaeological data is exempt from public disclosure due to looting.”
I’ve always been fascinated by historic preservation issues and challenges, and this sort of compelling information can change the way we learn about our past and future.
What’s so cool about this award?
It’s not about the type of ‘back end’ commodity services I often use as examples of wasteful spending, it’s about a front-end application that real people living real lives can use.
We need to make public information accessible and that means having the willingness to open previously hidden data. This is a fantastic example of how data can help improve decision-making, policy, finances and our politics.
Well done, Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation!
Your partner in service,
Reuven.
As a State IT worker, and a history buff, I was quite interested in checking out the WISAARD site, and it is a great site. It is also a great example of what the monies going for IT in the state are supposed to be doing. It seems the major issue with state IT practices is a lot of the money is spent on technology for technology’s sake and the focus of how technology can serve the constituents of the states and make the government more efficient come lower in the priority list . I am glad to see that the DAHP has their priorities in place, and I am very happy to see Washington’s Historical information delivered to the residents of the State of Washington in such a compelling way.
I think it’s about leadership and culture. Culture is easier to change in a smaller agency/organization, and one strong leader can really make a difference. Much harder to turn the cultural ship in the right direction if it’s an ocean liner, than if it’s a canoe. But it CAN be done; you just have to amass ENOUGH leaders to make it happen.
DAHP is tiny; it was proposed for elimination or consolidation into State Parks this past year.
There are other examples.
TIB (transportation improvement board) is also tiny; it also has a fabulous web application (http://www.tib.wa.gov/performance/Performance.cfm read about the awards, click on the link to go to the actual dashboard) showing both transparency in TIB investments as well as information citizens care about accessing in a friendly way. Steve Gorcester at TIB really took the lead on making this happen, and suspect there’s someone very like him at DAHP. Similarly, Don Chase at OAH (office of administrative hearings) managed to save a bunch of $ by virtualizing – and he’ll tell you it was because he got to be pretty authoritative about some of the decisions.
Leaders matter.
On the other hand, Puget Sound Partnership (also a tiny agency) just got seriously dinged by the auditor for questionable IT expenditures that weren’t necessarily in the public interest or even done the right way. Somebody at the top made those decisions, and decided those actions were ok.
It’s about leadership and culture.