Just started reading Rafe Sagarin’s Learning from the Octopus. A former senator Gary Hart writes in the foreword: “Over time, closed systems produce fewer and fewer innovations, because closed systems, by definition, are based on certain increasingly unchallengeable fundamental principiles” (ix).
I glanced up to one of my bookselves and saw the history of Finnish Security Intelligence Service. How very fitting.
I have always been a great fan of public libraries but have only recently given some thoughts for the institution per se. It is a great example of the power of shared resources. As to the inclusion of one’s favourite themes and books in the collections, giving feedback often gives you power over silent people. Cave ab homine unius libri.
Long live libraries of all kind!
The following is a modest proposal to get more for less for one’s tax money. The public purse has been and will be squeezed very tight in the coming years. Every penny saved is a penny saved.
Today, I visited the customer service point of my hometown (27.5k inhabitants) to sort out a berth for my sailing boat for the next summer. Our town’s website was advanced enough to have some maps of all the public docks available.
A simple phone call to reserve the place was the only thing needed. Except that it wasn’t. I called the place. Got a reservation. Waited a few weeks gathering a nagging feeling that something is not how it should be.
Visited the service point. No reservation. Did one. Got home. Got a call. The original reservation was found. Went to cancel the second one. Filled out a form. Got the key for the dock gate. Went home. Went to see the ice-captured dock. Tried the lock. Nothing happened. Have to go to change the key.
Is it only me, or is this a bit too complicated to reserve one place and to get a right key for it? The service itself was excellent. The problem is more of a structural kind. In a perfect world there would be an interactive map with all the docks and exact berths to be clicked. Pop, comes a reservation box, and wham comes an electronic invoice.
Give them the expertise and tools and they will deliver. This might be a bit optimistic, but the reality is that there are no technical obstacles anymore. The problem is mainly mental. Are we too fixed to certain lines of thought or can we escape them? The National Audit Office of Finland sees big possibilities of cost savings in the health care management. Seize the moment and stop complaining about inadequate funds!
One day, I hope, the Finnish public services and be called lean and agile. There is a lot to learn in Estonian public IT, for example.
We should try to provide an alternative for the big and clumsy IT service providers. Strictly from a taxpayer’s viewpoint, they tend to mess things up, including well lobbied and cumbersome public contract acts. It could even be quite forcefully argued that the existing situation gives them large scale unfair advantage.
Keeping the small players in the game by cultivating a rich and diverse startup ecosystem would perhaps help to save our precious tax euros. Just make the applications easily scalable and use state of the art solutions. The rest will follow.
I just read an extremely interesting Economist article on how cunning use of smartphones help to foster democracy by publicly posted election tallies. This both increases fairness and activates citizens. More of this, please.
