Economic Stimulus Fosters Excitement, Cautious Optimism Among Government CIOs
By Richard McKinney, Microsoft State & Local Government Technology Advisor
At the NASCIO Midyear Conference in Baltimore last week, speakers & attendees alike were primarily focused on just one thing: the $787 billion economic stimulus package and what it means for state and local governments.
The money made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is headed toward U.S. communities like a fast-moving train, creating both excitement and a bit of anxiety among state CIOs. On one hand, CIOs are excited about being in the spotlight with a key role to play, having the opportunity to improve their internal systems and to help create a new level of citizen participation in government through better reporting and feedback mechanisms. On the other hand, many of the CIOs I spoke to are feeling a little concerned because the federal funding comes with higher-than-ever expectations of transparency and accountability—and the money is coming slightly faster than the guidance they need to understand and comply with the new tracking and reporting requirements.
Beth Noveck, a key advisor to President Obama from the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President, gave the keynote speech. She said among other things that this administration wanted to reverse the notion that government is the single source of expertise. She talked about reaching out and building a more collaborative government, and the inherent challenge of making sure that public feedback was channeled to the right place for consideration. Vivek Kundra, the first-ever federal CIO, spoke later the same day. He reaffirmed President Obama’s commitment to keep citizens informed, to hear and communicate their feedback, and to use this opportunity to change forever the way government does business.And as the first federal CIO, Vivek promised to work very closely with NASCIO on our common IT issues and challenges.
Both speakers emphasized that Obama’s commitment would require new models for transparency and self-service, which would enable the public to track, review and respond to government actions, and would establish a two-way dialogue between the people running federal, state and local government programs and those being served by them.
The first real deadline for state and local governments under the ARRA is October 10, 2009, when the initial public reports are due. Meanwhile, CIOs have a lot of questions:
- Will more specific guidance be provided in time to comply with the reporting deadlines?
- How will the federal government ensure that everyone reports the same way, attaches the same meanings to terms such as “jobs created” and “shovel-ready projects,” and uses the same metrics to measure their progress, thereby avoiding apples-to-oranges comparisons?
- If a stimulus grant passes through a state government to a city or county within that state, does the city send its reports back to the state or to the federal government directly?
At this point even though there are more questions than answers, there seemed to be the expressed hope throughout the conference that perhaps this is the beginning of a new and more partnership-oriented approach to federal-state-local relations.
The Microsoft team, in conversations with state CIOs and others at the conference, was able to make more widely known our recently created Microsoft Stimulus360 software solution, designed specifically to help public sector agencies manage, track, report, and publish information on economic stimulus programs (check out our suggestion for the National Dialogue). This SharePoint/CRM/SQL/Live Earth solution, available to Microsoft customers at no cost and with minimal training or installation requirements, is intended to help agencies rapidly address these hard-charging management and reporting issues by jump-starting their solution development.
So while many state and local CIOs may sometimes feel as though the federal government is asking them to build a plane while they’re trying to fly it, their excitement and determination seems to be growing faster than their understandable initial anxiety. There also seems to be increasing confidence among government CIOs that we will figure these things out as we go along and solve this problem by working together.
For more information about Microsoft Stimulus 360, visit http://www.microsoft.com/government/stimulus360/.
