Commentary: The public deserves more responsive government services

Government services to citizens are at a critical crossroads. The 2010 midterm elections seemed to show the public wants two things from federal agencies: more responsive services and smaller government. Skillfully implemented information technology systems hold the key to striking this balance.

Agile, adaptive and virtual government services can facilitate what members of the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council refer to as citizen-enabling open government. Such services can eliminate unnecessary layers of bureaucracy. The American public would like government to be the invisible hand that anticipates and adeptly responds to their needs -- the fewer interactions required to receive services the better. The place to begin improving service is with major life events -- the birth of a child, death of a family member, leaving the military, opening a business or any number of life-changing events that compel citizens to interact with government agencies.

Such events trigger information exchanges across many agencies to determine eligibility and deliver benefits. Improving service requires fundamentally redesigning individual agency processes and integrating them to deliver services regardless of which organizational boundaries they cross. Citizens should be able to enter their personal information once; agencies themselves should be able to share that information as needed in the future.

Consider two scenarios to see how the existing ad hoc system affects citizens: When "Chris" decided to end his Marine service, he did not realize how difficult it would be to return to life in the civilian world. He proudly served tours in Iraq and then Afghanistan until a roadside bomb exploded, costing him a leg and cutting short his military service. Now he needed extensive care from the Veterans Affairs Department. He also planned to go to college using his GI Bill benefits and buy a house using his VA loan benefits. And he needed a job to make that possible.

But his experiences with VA and financial institutions, coupled with his struggles to find a job and get help from local governments, left him disillusioned. He had to continually resubmit the same personal information to multiple entities within the same organizations. Agencies were seemingly incapable of sharing information. He lost at least one job opportunity because someone in a government agency entered erroneous or incomplete information, damaging his credit. The agencies he tried to work with, whether at the federal, state or local level, failed to react with the urgency he felt was needed to get his life moving.

Another citizen -- "Jessica" -- recently completed a master's degree program in acupuncture and was anxious to begin her career. She wanted to open a clinic connected to other health care practices that would link different approaches in a holistic medicine environment. But the licensing hurdles at the local, state and federal levels proved daunting. She had to repeatedly fill out applications with essentially the same information. Like Chris, Jessica found everything took a long time to complete. It was especially frustrating trying to coordinate services with practitioners from different professions, such as chiropractics and internal medicine. Each had their own set of processes linked to government agencies that oversaw them. Crossing those boundaries was difficult, time-consuming and frustrating.

Both Chris and Jessica experienced the results of years of stovepiped government information technology investments that are focused on supporting specific business processes for a single program or operation. Typically, these programs serve agencies' needs, not citizens' needs. Worst of all, most life events rarely happen within the context of a single program or agency. Existing processes are not designed to deliver a complete suite of services to an individual citizen. As a result, information is not shared and processes are not linked across programs, agencies and levels of government. And technologies either restrict or prevent supporting the full range of needs citizens bring to government.

The citizen-enabling open government we envision would focus on end-to-end process design. Chris and Jessica will have to interact only once with an agency that begins the process of providing their service.

This is a potentially game-changing solution. Almost all the interactions collectively necessary to deliver the desired services require multiple, cloud-based, shared information exchanges. These exchanges are, in effect, the lifeblood that facilitates citizen-enabled open government. Unlike the environment that exists today, where information is specific to the agency or program, information within the open government environment will be available consistently to every agency that requires it, in the form necessary to support the delivery of the service. For citizens like Chris and Jessica, who submitted their key information at the beginning of the process, they never need to understand or even deal with how each agency uses their information or what is shared between agencies. The exchanges of information occur automatically because the information would be available to every agency that needs it via the cloud.

Creating these information exchanges independent of individual agency processes is a critical component for implementing a "virtual government" that will respond rapidly, effectively and in customized ways to citizens' needs. Every agency can access the information it needs to complete its step in the process. Chris and Jessica would not have to repeatedly provide the same information at each stop along the way.

The challenge is to design an information sharing environment capable of accommodating a variety of needs. It is important that the technology that every agency uses be agile, responsive and flexible. Agencies must be able to develop and change services rapidly to respond effectively to citizens like Chris and Jessica. The technology must allow services to be scaled up or down as rapidly as needed. This has the potential to drive down the costs of delivering services and free up funding for other things.

Integrated business services must be well-defined. In addition, they must be acquired, delivered and managed in fundamentally different ways. Therefore, the acquisition process also must be flexible and adaptable.

Clearly, the dynamic, agile, cross-agency environment described above is dramatically different from what exists today. Most systems that provide the services that Chris and Jessica need are narrowly specific to the programs they support. Information is tied to individual agency programs and applications. And funding, management and procurement processes are aligned with individual agency program needs and objectives. There must be a focus on creating and supporting management processes that give precedent to the cross-agency outcomes needed to deliver life event services. For this to work, governing entities must be established that focus on the end result for citizens like Chris and Jessica. They must have funding and authority to implement these changes that cross programs and agencies.

Citizen empowering open government is nothing less than a blueprint for transformation of the relationship between government and its citizens. Turning this vision into reality will take leadership. It is not for the faint of heart as it advocates breaking with long-held traditions, taking on cultural impediments and smashing parochial agency mission barriers.

Bob Haycock served as chief enterprise architect in the Office of Management and Budget in 2004. He currently is a principal at Deep Water Point LLC consulting on enterprise architecture related matters and serves as an adviser to the Industry Advisory Council's Enterprise Architecture Shared Group on transforming government operations.