A few years ago Nicholas G. Carr published an article in the Harvard Business Review titled, “Does IT Matter.” It argues that IT has become a commodity input for businesses and, thus, no longer provides much opportunity to gain a competitive advantage. The article encouraged business leaders to re-examine their assumptions about the value of IT. Predictably, the article caused a firestorm of response. Business leaders from Steve Ballmer to Intel’s CEO Craig Barrett fired back to defend IT investment as a critical aspect of building competitive advantage. The article was later expanded into a book, Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage
The article and book came to mind today as I read a post on the Open Government Directive (OGD) by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. Craig highlights a chart from the Open Government Tracker indicating the extent to which agencies are meeting the mandates of the OGD and engaging with the public.
OpenGov Tracker
Craig applauds the OGD efforts as, “…a quiet beginning to large-scale improvements in the way citizens run the country.” What is most interesting about the post is the virulence of the ridicule targeted at Craig in the comments. It is safe to say that most commentators think that most OGD efforts won’t amount to much.
Though I do believe that over time the Open Government Initiative can transform government IT, I also think it is important to step back and determine the actual ROI of these efforts. In other words, it is easy enough for an agency to put up a discussion board or create an open@agency.gov email address, but what does that actually achive, other than getting a check mark next to the agency’s name on some OGD tracking site?
A few weeks ago, on Stephen Buckley’s OpenGovernmentRadio program, guest Katie Delahaye Paine spoke about the ROI of transparency. I’d recommend her site as a good place to start learning more about the issue.
Of course, the next deadline of the OGD is for agencies to post plans detailing how they are going to address openness, transparency, and participation over the long term. As such, I think now is the time to fully consider whether Open Government matters and how we can most accurately create and account for that value.