After almost a year of working with the governor, legislators and advocacy groups, we produced a 70-page bound report, complete with appendices. When I got to Tucson, I quickly found that access to government records means a fellow who lives on the 1200 block of S. Wright Road wants to see planning and permit information so he will know why his sidewalk is being dug up. As local-government CIOs, we are community leaders who must do more than manage the data center, the network and the technicians. We need to be involved with business, education and other government organizations to ensure that change made possible by information technology is appropriately understood, planned for and exploited. Engineers can explain what technology is.
System managers can explain what it does.
But we must explain how technology can be used to further a community's political agenda. We must explain how we can use the tools of technology to improve even the way we dig up sidewalks. In successful communities, that improvement will come from examining the way we organize ourselves to deliver service. It will come from investing in information technology infrastructure that creates connections that have never existed before. It will come if we find the courage and the political will to change the things we must change to ensure that each citizen sees a government organized to effectively meet his or her individual needs.