14 CAPTURE. COSTTREE 2016 Q4 ISSUE
WALL OF WIRES
All these wires are tangled. If you think of it as each person using an individual software application (like a GIS system, agenda management system, project management system, cost allocation plan system, grants management system, ERP, etc.), each person represents a wire. There are probably hundreds of systems in an agency working independently every day and not one of them talks to another one. Each of these wires get tangled and create a wall that blocks us from overall efficiency. How much duplication of data and effort is used in these separate systems? Do you even know what information is in another system that you could use?
How can we connect the wires and break down the wall to create efficiency and connectivity within the agency? That is really the next step of technology—data collaboration and integration between different software systems that are no longer hosted and maintained locally. Creating ecosystems of software that allow for one login, data sharing between systems, and collaboration of effort by unlocking the systems to work together, that is the new phase in technology.
Your financial data can be entered once into the ERP then ported to all the other places across the city where that information is used. You can be in your grants management system looking at what grants are available to you and, at the same time, your indirect cost (that you knew nothing about) can be surfaced in your system, so you can make better decisions on how to meet the expectations of the grant. Duplication of efforts is eliminated, contradictions in data from multiple segregated tracking systems is no longer a concern, and the wires have been connected to surface information that is pertinent to what you are doing today.
We are finally beginning to see these silos of data smashed open and the figurative wall of wires becoming pathways. Cloud-hosted technologies eliminate the need for server rooms and downtime for software updates.
When the systems talk, we will finally accomplish both of the overarching goals of technology—increasing the quality and quantity of our output AND reducing our workload (a reduced workload means cheaper operations!). When it’s in the cloud, your software is available wherever you are and, when your software talks, the agency’s data is there for whoever needs it. It is no longer YOUR data; it becomes THE data.
So, how do we achieve this with ecosystems of technology? In the nineties, when there was the big Silicon Valley boom and tech companies were a dime a dozen, the end goal for the tech companies was to be the first to market and the one who created a specific application that revolutionized
"How can we connect the wires..."