[Okfn-ca] Fwd: New from eaves.ca: Government Procurement Reform – It matters

[Immanuel Giulea]

FYI


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: eaves.ca <david at eaves.ca>
Date: Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 10:40 AM
Subject: New from eaves.ca: Government Procurement Reform – It matters
To: giulea.immanuel at gmail.com


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   New from eaves.ca: Government Procurement Reform – It
matters<http://eaves.ca>
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Government Procurement Reform – It
matters<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Eavesca/~3/qTXC-TVXBb0/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 25 Oct 2013 11:17 AM PDT

Earlier this week I posted a slidecast on my talk to Canada’s Access to
Information Commissioners<http://eaves.ca/2013/10/20/access-to-information-technology-and-open-data-keynote-for-the-commissioners/>about
how, as they do their work, they need to look deeper into the
government “stack.”

My core argument was how decisions about what information gets made
accessible is no longer best managed at the end of a policy development or
program delivery process but rather should be embedded in it. This means
monkeying around and ensuring there is capacity to export government
information and data from the tools (e.g. software) government uses every
day. Logically, this means monkeying around in procurement policy (see
slide below) since that is where the specs for the tools public servants
use get set. Trying to bake “access” into processes after the software has
been chosen is, well, often an expensive nightmare.

[image: Gov stack]

Privately, one participant from a police force, came up to me afterward and
said that I was simply guiding people to another problem – procurement. He
is right. I am. Almost everyone I talk to in government feels like
procurement is broken. I’ve said as much myself in the
past<http://eaves.ca/2012/05/30/the-us-governments-digital-strategy-establishing-the-benchmark-and-lessons/>.
Clay Johnson <http://twitter.com/cjoh> is someone who has thought about
this more than others, here he is below at the Code for America
Summit<http://cfasummit.org/>with a great slide (and
talk <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3CwGA2SWlc>) about how the current
government procurement regime rewards all the wrong behaviours and often,
all the wrong players.

[image: Clay Risk
profile]<http://eavesca.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/clay-risk-profile.jpg>

So yes, I’m pushing the RTI and open data community to think about
procurement on purpose. Procurement is borked. Badly. Not just from a
wasting tax dollars money perspective, or even just from a service delivery
perspective, but also because it doesn’t serve the goals of transparency
well. Quite the opposite. More importantly, it isn’t going to get fixed
until more people start pointing out that it is broken and start
contributing to solving this major bottle neck of a problem.

I highly, highly recommend reading Clay Johnson’s and Harper
Reed’s<https://twitter.com/harper>opinion piece in today’s New York
Times about procurement titled Why
the Government Never Gets Tech
Right<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/opinion/getting-to-the-bottom-of-healthcaregovs-flop.html?_r=0>
.

All of this becomes more important if the White House’s (and other
governments’ at all levels) have any hope of executing on their digital
strategies<http://eaves.ca/2012/05/30/the-us-governments-digital-strategy-establishing-the-benchmark-and-lessons/>
(image
below).  There is going to be a giant effort to digitize much of what
governments do and a huge number of opportunities for finding efficiencies
and improving services is going to come from this. However, if all of this
depends on multi-million (or worse 10 or 100 million) dollar systems and
websites we are, to put it frankly, screwed. The future of government isn’t
to be (continue to be?) taken over by some massive SAP implementation that
is so rigid and controlled it gives governments almost no opportunity to
innovate. And this is the future our procurement policies steer us toward.
A future with only a tiny handful of possible vendors, a high risk of
project failure and highly rigid and frail systems that are expensive to
adapt.

Worse there is no easy path here. I don’t see anyone doing procurement
right. So we are going to have to dive into a thorny, tough problem.
However, the more governments that try to tackle it in radical ways, the
faster we can learn some new and interesting lessons.

[image: Open Data
WH]<http://eaves.ca/2012/05/30/the-us-governments-digital-strategy-establishing-the-benchmark-and-lessons/>


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