10 Ways that Design Thinking Can Save Government
by steve ressler

Have you ever looked at a stand-up toothpaste tube or an ATM that returns your card before starting the transaction and thought, “What a great idea”?

You are not alone.   

In a recent 60 Minutes episode, Charlie Rose interviewed David Kelley, CEO of IDEO on the power of design thinking. His company has created thousands of breakthrough inventions, including the Zyliss kitchen tools that are easy to use, Apple’s first computer mouse, TiVo’s thumbs up/down button, and a better Pringle for Procter & Gamble.

Design thinking is an innovative approach that incorporates human behavior into design by using observation and cross-discipline teams. At its simplest, it is focused on solving problems and discovering opportunities through a threefold approach — technology, business and human values as they look at the feasibility, viability and usability of solutions.

In the last few years, it has gone from a small idea to mainstream — from 60 Minutes episodes to whole conferences dedicated to design thinking. Stanford created a school dedicated to teaching design thinking as a tool for innovation — the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford led by David Kelley of IDEO.

And now it’s coming to government.   

The UK Government Digital Service used these design thinking principles in its technology manifesto, which among its many items, recommends starting with user needs, designing with data and focusing on iteration. The first major release from the Government Digital Service is Gov.uk, a one-stop shop for government services, such as renewing licenses, finding out about pensions, registering deaths and a host of other things. Based on its design process of talking to users and alpha and beta releases, the site has focused on a key goal — absolute simplicity with which information is presented.

Further, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has launched an Innovation Lab with courses on design thinking. The D.C.-based Design Thinking DC group was founded by Jenn Gustetic of NASA and includes co-organizer Stephanie Rowe, former TSA executive. It has grown to more than 850 members and held 17 meet-ups in less than two years. IDEO itself has spun off a public-sector group that has worked with numerous agencies from the Social Security Administration to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.

So how can design thinking help you save government? At its simplest, it encourages us to focus on the basics of what our citizens need and how can we resolve these needs in the quickest and simplest ways.

So here are 10 design thinking questions that you can use to re-imagine government services.

Details Here

first published week of:   01/28/2013

192 Billion Market That Startup Entrepreneurs Shouldn’t Ignore: Government IT
by  coleen taylor

In Silicon Valley and other tech entrepreneurship hubs, you don’t meet many startup founders who are excitedly building products aimed at the government sector.

But in an on-stage discussion Wednesday night at San Francisco’s Founders Den coworking space, tech entrepreneur, investor, and author Tim O’Reilly and California’s Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom both agreed that there absolutely should be more startup activity in the government space — not just out of civic duty, but also because out of financial opportunity.

Speaking in front of an audience of startup founders, O’Reilly cited figures from Newsom’s new book Citizenville that show the surprisingly large amount of money that the US government spends on technology.

“$192 billion gets spent every year on government IT at the federal, state, and local levels,” O’Reilly said. “You compare that to the size of the markets that some of you guys are going after [with your startups]… there are amazing opportunities in this space.”

Details Here

first published week of:   02/25/2013

2013 State CIO Survey: An Enterprise View of IT
by govtech.com

The fourth annual survey of state chief information officers was released on Oct. 14, and surprisingly, cybersecurity, the cloud and social media are not the big news. The report includes data from 54 anonymously contributing states and territories. Run by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), TechAmerica, and Grant Thonton, the survey report offers results on 42 multiple-choice and open-ended questions, covering a wide range of CIO responsibilities.

“While CIOs continue to face a wide variety of challenges in the effective delivery of technology services, the reforms they are driving consistently embrace a common philosophy: adopt an enterprise vision, drive enterprise thinking, and implement enterprise solutions,” the report states. The report also showed a rise in integration across the enterprise and across jurisdictions to the point that such occurrences are “becoming the norm rather than exception.” continued…

first published week of:   10/21/2013

3 Forces Hindering Public-Sector Collaboration
by colin wood

In a time when the public sector must do more with ever-tightening budgets, collaboration is imperative. And as shown by a 2012 GovDelivery poll, 96 percent of public-sector employees said they believed that stronger relationships with consultants, other agencies and the public would be beneficial to their own agencies.

While public-sector leaders likely read the same best-selling books explaining how to collaborate, how to innovate and how to change government as we know it, there are only a few who actually start meaningful collaborations or actually innovate. Most people agree that collaboration and innovation are good things, so what’s stopping the changing of government?

Because the public sector has additional forces at work that routinely prevent successful collaboration from happening, says Rob White, Chief Innovation Officer for Davis, Calif., who has experience with collaboration from his time as director of economic development in Livermore, Calif. 

In this position, White reached out to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories to begin mutually beneficial, long-term partnerships -- a collaboration that was a turning point for Livermore, he said. Not only did it create new research opportunities for the labs, but it also provided a way for the labs to get around certain lobbying rules. It created new jobs for the region and provided new resources for the city, and before too long, Livermore was being invited to participate in the Bay Area Council and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. To state it simply, collaboration put Livermore on the map.

White is now studying for his professional doctorate in policy planning and development at the University of Southern California, and researching collaboration in government, he said, has given him a lot of time to think about why people aren’t collaborating. “Collaborations are the hardest types of partnerships to manage,” White said, adding that there are three core forces that hinder collaboration in the public sector. continued…

first published week of:   04/08/2013

4 More Ways Government Can Use Metadata Right Now
by  jim mcgann

The government’s use of metadata has been thrust into the spotlight with the NSA’s attempt to thwart terrorism by tracking habits and connections of suspects on watch lists.

But the value of metadata goes beyond the NSA. Metadata is an efficient and cost-effective way to look at unstructured email and documents across data centers, and is often used by financial services and manufacturing companies to control costs, compliance and security matters.  continued…

first published week of:   09/16/2013

5 Ways Government Can Engage Small App Developers
by jason shueh

Mobile apps abound by the thousands, populating our pockets with the latest in digital shortcuts and simple entertainment. And yet, beyond their colorful glow, it’s easy to overlook the talented innovators behind them.

Minh Tran, an independent mobile app developer, knows this well. Based in Virginia, Tran developed Fix311, a mobile app used for roadway damage alerts that has been adopted by a number of jurisdictions around the country. More recently, Tran developed CardSwapp, an app that processes mobile payments using QR codes.