County's Bold Initiative May Reinvent Government for Digital Age

By John M. Eger, San Diego Union-Tribune, Sunday, May 9, 1999

At close of business April 30, over fifty boxes of materials were personally delivered to the Clerk of the County of San Diego by executives of IBM, CSC, and EDS. In the boxes were their responses - - developed by some of the best and brightest experts in the field of information technology - - to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors call for a partnership for the provision of all of the county's telecommunications and information services. Estimated to represent 700 million to one billion dollars, this initiative by a regional government to partner with private enterprise is clearly one of the most significant efforts to use the "outsourcing" or partnership technique now common to business, and represents what could well be a new model for governance for the digital age.

Currently, the County's services are provided through eight separate data centers and a complex set of fragmented telecommunications networks. According to outgoing Chief Administrative Officer, Larry Prior, these networks "are often unreliable, and aging critical software applications require replacement." The County also has experienced difficulties in hiring, retention and training of qualified high-technology staff.

Although several large technology initiatives are underway, the Board of Supervisors concluded that in the wake of a technology revolution reshaping life and work in the 21st Century, "the County is clearly falling behind." With an annual budget of close to two and a half billion dollars, the Board was concerned that it could not continue its current pace of investment in new technology and still serve the basic needs of the region for health care and education, safety, transportation, land use, and protection of the environment. San Diego County, unlike other government agencies throughout the Country, is coming to grips with a harsh reality. If they wish to continue to serve their citizens, and importantly, keep pace with the revolution in technology now affecting every segment of both business and society, a partnership with industry is the only alternative.

The outsourcing itself is a bold and creative decision to solve a problem so many other governments around the world are having difficulty dealing with. But reinventing government really starts with redefining government . As authors David Osborne and Ted Gaebler put it in their 1992 book Reinventing Government, governments may have an obligation to provide certain public services but not necessarily deliver them.; that they argue, can easily be outsourced or provided by a private sector partner and most often, more efficiently.

The outsourcing also provides an opportunity to reinvent and rebirth the entire community. As the County put it in its request seeking industry support, "information technology has the potential to radically improve the value of services provided by the County to its citizens; dramatically reduce the cost of government; and raise the level of quality of our programs;" and if executed correctly, should also stimulate economic development and enhance the quality of life for the entire region.

Given the County's enormous responsibilities for education, health and human services, public safety, land use and environment and a myriad of other matters, an outsourcing of this size offers an unprecedented opportunity to create a business model of delivering public services - - not only by eliminating duplication of the supporting infrastructure and information systems, but in the core functional departments of the County government. More exciting opportunities lie in the transformation of the community into a "smart community," a community aggressively deploying information technology as a catalyst for life and work in the new knowledge-based global information economy.

Already communities around the globe, often without being consciously aware of it, are starting to sketch out the first draft of the smart communities of the 21st Century. Singapore some years ago launched its IT2000 initiative, also known as the Intelligent Island plan, in which every home, school, office, and hospital is wired with fiber optic cable. Stockholm is moving forward with a similar plan, and wants free email for everyone over the age of six. Seattle and Silicon Valley have constructed large scale public access networks to enable smart permitting, a community access information network for the delivery of other vital services such as disaster preparedness, and child abuse prevention. The tiny university town of Blacksburg, Virginia has transformed itself into an "electronic village," with the majority of the town's businesses and residents connected to a community-wide broadband data network.

San Diego was one of the first regions to define the concept of the "smart community" with it's City of the Future" report to mayor Susan Golding in 1994. But as the report pointed out, "Cities of the future are not cities at all in the usual sense. Rather they are powerful regional economies" , in which everyone-business, government and community organizations --are all working together to produce a robust vision and plan for their common future.

San Diego clearly has a lead over other communities-it has more coaxial and fiber optic cable, and more wireless infrastructure than any other region of the world; last year there were more modems sold in the county connecting our businesses and citizens to the internet ; and there are more highly educated workers here and universities of the highest caliber too. Importantly we have begun the arduous process of nurturing a new and exciting vision of our region.

Industry as a matter of economic necessity is already transforming itself. But we must prepare our community and government institutions, too, indeed all our citizens for what is truly a fundamental shift in the basic structure of the economy-a shift affecting our own regional economy and the very fabric of society. If we are to succeed not just survive this transformation we need to understand that there is no longer a national economy ; only a global economy and as urban expert Neal Peirce puts it " a constellation of regional economies with strong cities at the core." Pierce and and Kenichi Ohmae, author of The Borderless Economy, have labeled this trend a rebirth of the city-state, or as Ohmae calls them "region-states."

Thus the County's initiative represents a unique opportunity to lay the foundation for regional electronic government, and in the process, enhance electronic commerce too. We have the opportunity to create a smart community and smart government at the same time. For such information age infrastructures and services allow a wide variety of government, business and institutional transactions to take place electronically over a network of networks being developed in the region. And such efforts empower whole communities in the process.

The County in its wisdom recognized that this effort would not only significantly enhance service to its citizens, but dramatically influence the way business is conducted too, helping position the entire region for the Age of the Internet. And it required the respondents to share their vision of the future of the region with the County to be factored in the decision making process .

This laborious effort -- a decision is expected by September - - doubtless will yield enormous benefits to our region . By partnering with industry, the County should greatly reduce the cost of capital the government needs to keep pace; greatly enhance service to the citizens of San Diego; provide the training and human resources needed to attract top support staff to do all the county's business; and in the end, make San Diego and the entire region a magnet for the knowledge worker and knowledge industries of the 21st Century.

John M. Eger, Van Deerlin Endowed Professor of Communications and Public Policy, is also Executive Director of SDSU's International Center for Communications.

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