Political Realities of Technology Transformation
Political leaders including elected officials always have trepidations about adopting disruptive or emerging technology due in no small part to the inherent risk in being an early adopter in government, where risk-taking is not a common condition and where the possibility of failure is not an option. The newer and less proven the technology, the higher the trepidation rate. this seems to be true regardless of the potential return on investment, so innovators must find ways to gently introduce new technology in ways that assure its eventual contribution to the purposes of the agency served.
This reality is rooted in the apparently natural state of reluctance to move even to contemporary technology, let alone disruptive or emerging technology. Many leaders have for so long left the technology to their more technical staff representatives, that they do not have the mechanisms in place to justify to funding bodies the move to more effective techology of any sort. This reluctance is evident in the efforts to persuade public officials to participate in integrated justice information sharing, particularly when new and less well understood technology is involved.
Tammy Woodhams of Kalamazoo County sent a link to an interesting article on this topic. William D. Eggers, Global Director at Deloitte Research – Public Sector, the research arm of Deloitte Consulting, and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, has published this article on overcoming the obstacles to technology implementation.
