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Information Technologies and State GovernmentsChallenges for Political Leadership |
Executive Summary
Jerry Mechling, Harvard University
June, 1995
In many ways, the Information Age is epitomized by recent changes in automobile bumpers.
They used to be made of chrome. They were expensive, with costs covering the mining, transportation, and metal bending involved in their production. Today they are made of plastic: much less expensive, with costs covering the knowledge of chemistry that lets us turn cheap raw materials into valuable finished products.
As with the bumper, the keys to productivity are switching from raw material and energy to knowledge. This makes it important to develop workable answers to three questions:
1. What should political leaders know about information technologies? They don't need to know much about technology, per se. But they do need to know how computers and telecommunications make easy for information to be searched and shared, and how they support the hand-offs that take place from worker to worker in the course of service production and delivery. Computer networked organizations can often be designed with many fewer and faster hand-offs, getting work done 10 times as fast as paper-bound organizations, with 40 percent less labor. Computer networked markets are likewise much more efficient. Well-paid (i.e., productive) workers in knowledge-based economies need access to computer-networked organizations and markets.
2. What are the implications of information technologies for state governments? Networked organizations encourage empowerment of front-line workers along with reduced corporate overhead. In the context of American federalism, this encourages empowerment of state and local governments relative to the federal government. But knowledge-based economies will also require state governments to:
a) Innovate better and more. The Jeffersonian role for states as "laboratories of democracy" will need to be strengthened, as efficiency now depends more on innovation than on traditional bureaucratic controls. In many ways, states are well-positioned to support innovation because they are closer to the people than the federal government, and more highly motivated to innovate. But states may also find it difficult to acquire needed technical expertise, and to fund the safety nets needed to encourage reform.
b) Offer better customer service. Computer networks in government have only begun to be used as channels for offering remote service (1-800 numbers, e-mail, fax-back, etc.) or self-service (as with bank ATMs). Early experiments are finding that citizens appreciate the convenience of such services, with costs from 20% to 90% lower than the costs of
face-to-face service. States need to expand their remote and self-service offerings, and could fund such innovations through user charges, capital bonds, and partnerships with other governments and the private sector.
c) Respond to the diminished importance of geography. With firms free to locate anywhere they can get access to networked communications, governments should make sure that their own citizens and firms have such access. Singapore and Omaha have been doing this, with notable success.
d) Update and clarify several of the fundamental responsibilities of government. How should we define property rights for intangible products and services disseminated over digital networks? What should be the balance between regulating monopolies and insuring competition in a knowledge-based economy? How should we govern the rising influence of non-spatial communities such as trans-national corporations, professional associations, and ethnic groups? While these issues are not solely state concerns, economic success will depend on them, and states should participate in their clarification and resolution.
3. What are the implications for state political leadership? While the journey to a knowledge-based economy will create anxieties and conflicts, it is a journey that needs to be made. We can suffer now via the transitional costs of creating computer-networked organizations and markets, or suffer more later via much lower ongoing productivity.
Those seeking to exercise leadership on these issues might evaluate their efforts on the following checklist: a) the planning process (Are you explicitly addressing the issue of preparing for a knowledge-based economy?); b) the budget process (Are you finding the funds you need to invest in the information infrastructure "seed corn" needed for the future?); c) organization and staffing (Have you assembled trusted sources of leadership, and skills in the network building and reengineering you will be needing?) d) prospects for partnerships (Have you mobilized not only to your own administration, but supporters in other governments, industry groups, labor, the legislature, the press, and the general public?)
A key judgement call will involve how visible to make these issues. You can lose if the transition to a knowledge-based economy is not visible enough on the public agenda (and fails to mobilize needed support), and you can lose in some cases if it is too visible (fanning controversy and partisanship). Success seems most likely for those who can maintain long-term support: "Keeping the herd moving roughly west."