As many will know, until June 2019 I was in charge of the Information Technology Directorate of IFARHU. In charge of this position, we were able to meet different challenges during this administration, thanks to the team belonging to the Information Technology Directorate of IFARHU.
After these 5 years, I had the opportunity to look more closely at the issue of innovation and technology in government. Here are multiple challenges that I consider to be critical success factors for innovation and technology in this sector.
I will focus on issues related to governance, innovation, public policies, software and will ignore issues such as security, infrastructure and others… which I consider equally important but which are obvious to achieve the rest of the challenges.
#.How about a Ministry of Technology and Innovation?
In Panama, the National Authority for Government Innovation has the vision:
“Turn the Government into a competitive world-class Institution, transforming information and communication technologies so that they are accessible to the population, improve efficiency and simplify processes.”
During these 5 years, I always saw the AIG as a strategic ally for institutional objectives and goals at the level of technology and innovation. The AIG has large projects that it carries out through its well-trained collaborators, such as Panamá en Línea, Panamá Tramita, 311, Red Nacional Multiservicios, Nube Computacional Gubernamental or the National Internet Network.
Even though [Law 65 of October 30, 2009] (http://www.innovacion.gob.pa/descargas/Ley65.pdf) empowers the AIG, within its functions, to “Coordinate the development of initiatives that involve the modernization of the State, through the use of technological tools…” I feel that one of the important points to exercise greater leadership is that said Institution is located within the Ministry of the Presidency and the Administrator of the AIG becomes the Secretary of the National Council for Government Innovation, stipulated in Chapter III of the aforementioned Law.
A key point of improvement is emulating what is happening in other countries, where Ministries are being created to deal with innovation and technology issues, such as the cases of Brazil (MCT - Ministry of Science and Technology), Colombia (MINTIC - Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies), Costa Rica (Ministry of Science, Technology and Telecommunications), just to mention three cases.
With this, the AIG would have a more prominent role, more funds could be allocated and, in my opinion, the requests coming from this new ministry would be respected and fulfilled in a more interested manner. I also consider necessary a better approach to educational institutions (such as Universities), societies, foundations, organizations and communities… in addition to a small distance from certain suppliers and companies that look after only their projects.
#.Improve and regulate salaries. Equate them to the industry
One of the big problems in public institutions, the technology areas, is the retention of trained personnel.
Turnover can be astonishing and increases significantly in development, technical support, infrastructure and computer security departments.
Retaining staff is extremely complex when salaries are not in line with those of the industry. At Software Development, we choose to hire the best inexperienced staff and train them internally in software engineering and development best practices.
I believe that the main objective is to attract the best, but to do so we must pay them like the best.
This could be one of the efforts that the AIG could carry out in conjunction with the [National Directorate of Administrative Careers] (https://www.digeca.gob.pa/). Right there, they must urgently update the nomenclatures of the positions, such as the well-known “COMPUTER SYSTEMS AND METHODS ANALYST” (Code DSMI0502), which sounds like something taken out of some trunk, along with a Fortran or Cobol book.
#.Innovation is a process where everyone is involved
A blunder that is repeated is thinking that innovation belongs to the work of a Management. No. This must be considered one of the main strategies within the Government and must permeate each Institution in the same way.
I am sure that with an improvement in all technological aspects we could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the government, without the need for large investments. To do this, first is to understand that the role or role of technology has changed within government organizations (ministries, secretaries, authorities, institutions and others) and has gone from being an “operational role” to a “strategic role”.
Making these changes will take time and effort. Many will oppose the changes. We cannot expect the people in charge of such organizations to be part of those who oppose them.
The different departments and directorates must take on an innovation challenge, understanding that this process within their operational area also depends on them. A serious mistake is to think that only the technology department can lead these projects.
#.Fewer unnecessary tenders, more internal development (software) and Free SoftwareI clarify: I am not against tenders and support from suppliers. I think you can learn and delegate many developments to external companies, but we must make the guidelines very clear to ensure the continuity of the project.
You have no idea how many times I have seen software projects that are requested, developed, launched, but then require minor changes but the organization’s staff does not have the skills to follow up on the project.
Worse still: it was developed without following a guide or pattern defined by the organization, which was aligned with the current patterns and standards of the Institution.
Something that I can take away from what we were able to do was develop some simple (but that provide a starting point for improvement) Policies for the Development of Software Projects, where we define all the guidelines for how software is manufactured, what technologies can be used and what licensing can be used.
This seems somewhat silly or unnecessary, but I think it helped us so that, even when they are external suppliers, they can deliver work similar to what we usually develop, therefore we can follow up on it.
In an ideal world, the right thing to do would be to develop more technology inside the walls. Not only is it much cheaper in the short term, it is also cheaper in the long term.
Imagine how many engineers to get for the same price of project costs. But obviously, it has to be linked to the salary issue described in a previous point.
I believe that the Government can be the biggest beneficiary of Open Source. Hundreds of thousands of balboas can be saved from our budget simply by migrating to open and free solutions. No one would notice the difference in service.
As previous experience, we were able to use free and/or open technologies such as Laravel, PHP, Docker, Composer, PHP Unit, MariaDB, MySQL, Hadoop (and its entire ecosystem licensed by Apache), MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ, OS Ticket, ownCloud, Nextcloud, Wordpress, Bootstrap, Vagrant, Ruby, Sinatra, Rails, Angular, Vue, React, React Native, Ubuntu Server, Debian, Asterisk. Considering that this means that licensing costs can be eliminated, it does not mean that operation or implementation costs (with a professional) are eliminated.
If all these projects had been implemented and had replaced said free/open technologies with proprietary technologies, common in the government, the development and operation costs would be tens of thousands of dollars annually, at least. There are countries like Canada that have already started a plan for Open Government and have a draft for its creation, aimed at improving and amplifying the use and production of Free and Open Software within the government. The coolest thing about the whole process is that it is extremely transparent and they have open documents for feedback.
The use of open cooperation tools is nothing new. In Latin America I highlight the case of Argentina with the Undersecretary of Digital Government of Argentina, led by @Dan_Abadie who have a GitHub channel with several Open and Free projects of their own developments. By the way, I declare myself a fan of the advances in the Digital Government of Argentina.
Obviously, the pressure from some entrepreneurs and companies is strong and will not be long in coming, and not all proprietary software is bad or has a comparable replacement in the free/open world (it would never replace an Exchange, Tableau, Power BI, Excel, to give a few examples).
#.Neither regulations nor institutions should prevent innovation… but they could direct it
With all due respect, institutions such as the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR) are one of the great blockages to government innovation.
The exaggerated amount of regulations, policies and regulations, made to protect the interests of the Panamanian State, have a counterproductive effect on the agility of the processes.
Many of the bureaucratic processes, obsolete, outdated and requiring a large amount of paper (single use and subsequent disposal), are required for prior control or subsequent control, carried out by the different inspection offices within the institutions.
I think that their work is more than praiseworthy, in the end their mission is to “Supervise, regulate and control the movements of public funds and goods”, something that none of us could deny that they are doing, however I believe that the mechanisms through which they do it should be made more flexible and it would be very useful if, precisely, the Comptroller’s Office, forces us to go in a more agile and flexible direction.
In the end, the CGR through innovations such as “Follow me” (SCAFID) demonstrate that technology is a great support to improve public management.
Can you imagine if the CGR decided to make a plan to require digital documents only for the vast majority of processes and, those that require a signature, traveled electronically with their Electronic Signature? The rest would have no choice but to assume the new regulations, without further ado. Obviously, dreaming costs nothing.
#.Put the user and staff in the middleI believe that we must try to develop more and better capabilities and competencies in all technology personnel, but also in our public collaborators.
Basic computer skills are necessary for all collaborators, remembering that the illiteracy of the 21st century is digital illiteracy.
We must work on offering our clients (our users) easier ways to obtain their services. There are a large number of possibilities to offer digital services, just as the National Police is doing with the police record request, the results of which have been remarkably good.
On the other hand, we as users must demand and ask for more and better digital services. The ANTAI and the AIG have worked on the [Open Data] Portal (https://www.datosabiertos.gob.pa/) and notable progress has been made along these lines. The great advantage of open data is that, through the release of this data, we, as a civil society, can generate other services from them, with the source being the only external point.
#.Final words
I have a firm conviction that technology can improve public management, reduce bureaucracy and discretion. Institutions such as the Public Registry, internally, function much more efficiently than other institutions due to their great leverage in technology.
If the equalization of a much better technology team in our institutions and providing the staff of our institutions with the best skills and salaries were seen in a better light, we could achieve enormous changes in a short time and with little investment.
In the end, the first two assets of any technology organization are data (since it cannot be replaced) and people (since it costs a lot to replace them).