Technology has enabled the newer mobile, flexible workplace that allows for better collaboration, faster decisions, and higher productivity.
The White House, as well as the U.S. government generally, over the past 8+ years has demonstrated an increasing performance deficit in these areas of collaboration, decision speed, and productivity, particularly when compared to private corporations, who have embraced new technologies and new workplaces.
Consider these three examples: FEMA’s inability to manage the crisis in New Orleans; the CIA and FBI and other agencies not being ready on September 11, 2001; and the clumsy response to the current economic challenges. Inquiries and reports related to these examples have revealed that various key people and agencies have lacked access to timely information or have been unable to collaborate quickly.
Then consider comparable private sector capacity: Wal-Mart is a world leader in logistics, infinitely superior to either FEMA or the military and indeed did end up helping out with post-Katrina needs. Within the Google servers is probably more information about what potential terrorists are up to than at the FBI or CIA.
For U.S. government agencies to catch up even modestly to the productivity and innovation capacity, a new approach to workplaces is likely needed.
It could start at the top. I would suspect that few Presidents of major, successful corporations don’t have a Blackberry or the equivalent. Anyone who wants to have a laptop with high speed Internet access on their desk can have it. Denying this to Obama seems ridiculous –and if the President cannot decide this for himself, exactly who is in charge of the USA?
Security is a huge issue at every big company; this therefore does not seem like a good reason to tell Barack Obama he can’t have a Blackberry. The White House should be able to employ top IT people to put in appropriate security measures.
One argument I’ve heard as to why he shouldn’t have one is that all of his correspondence becomes public record. But what does that have to do with the Blackberry? In 2008, considerable official correspondence between all types of companies and organizations happens in e-mails. This is just 21st century workplace reality - the Office of the President needs to catch up. (I’m sure Obama knows what should and should not be said in e-mail messages!) And, he could always decide to read only.
Electronic communication is a key part of dynamic workplaces today that enable better collaboration and higher productivity. It was key to how Obama mobilized a nation to become President-elect. I would think that it will be key in the new White House — but it will be interesting to see what the Obama team decides to do.
Tags: Barack Obama, Blackberry, White House
November 24th, 2008 at 9:31 am
You know, the law being as it is today, every single e-mail sent in a major corporation must be archived for later retrival, be it for a lawsuit, regulatory action, or whatever. So it isn’t even like the excuse that the e-mails could be a “public record” is any different than what is faced in the private sector.
I agree. Let Obama keep his crackberry!
On the other hand, please consider that government unions don’t want productivity. The government can’t lay off people made surplus by rising productivity, so there may be less “bang for the buck” than you think. Katrina et al may be more of a cultural phenomenon than an IT one (too many people involved in the decision process, a process where taking risk is not rewarded, etc.).
November 24th, 2008 at 10:10 am
It is not a good day in America when the cover of the latest issue of The New Republic claims that economic depression is setting in, while the people who represent and advocate for the creative class (the class that likely will be responsible for the eventual recovery) are on a head-over-heels tangent about President-elect Obama’s Blackberry.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:15 am
“if the President cannot decide this for himself, exactly who is in charge of the USA?” Exactly. The byte stops here.
This is only one of hundreds of areas where Obama will be urged to take the cautious approach. Security is of course an issue, witness the recent hacking of both campaigns databases by “a foreign entity.” But to be defined by possible problems is to be immobilized.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Whitney — your point that we should be worried about the economy is well taken. Ultimately, considerable government intervention is coming. As seen under the Bush response to Katrina, that can be almost useless if departments and top individuals are not communicating, not collaborating and out of touch.
I’m suggesting that for the good of the country and the economy, Obama should be allowed to make the White House an efficient, 21st century workplace.
November 24th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
As seen under the Bush response to Katrina, that can be almost useless if departments and top individuals are not communicating, not collaborating and out of touch.
Agreed. But you’re naive if you think a little IT is going to change things. It’s a systematic issue with how the bureacracy is structured, and even who the bureacrats are.
Think about it this way: remember when everybody and anybody was installing SAP? All these major corps were spending hundreds of millions of dollars for “enterprise resouce planning” software, but only some corporations were getting a ROI for it.
Why was that? Because some corporations “re-engineered” to align their corporate structure to work with the software, and other just plopped the software over existing structures. The former worked, the later didn’t.
My fear is, if you give bureacrats crackberries, they just become… bureacrats with crackberries, nor the “communicating, collaborating, in touch” people you desire.
November 24th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Lots of stuff here.
The military is far and beyond the best logistical entity anywhere. Unfortunately the rest of the government does a much poorer job. In the case of Katrina, the problems can be traced to lack of human intelligence as opposed to informational intelligence.
Certainly safeguards should be in place. Doctors also generally use e-mail very infrequently to avoid malpractice problems and additional document management issues. But Obama should be able to use his crackberry. I guarantee the military uses all kinds of devices as do the intelligence agencies. But he’ll need an executive order rendering it all classified.
Here’s an interesting question? Could Obama blog if he so desired??
November 24th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Let’s not blame too much on technology. The Katrina disaster was largely because the “government doesn’t matter” administration had dismantled FEMA and staffed it from the top down with incompetent political hacks. Garbage in, garbage out.
Hayden is right about human intelligence but here it wasn’t information, it was stupidity.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:30 am
Hayden - I love the idea of a presidential blog! It would fit with the spirit of his run for Presidency. Actually, an internal only blog that would reach only “senior White House Staff / Cabinet people” might also be really effective at getting more communication happening.
On some other comments:
I probably didn’t state this loudly enough in my post … my point was not that Obama having a Blackberry would solve the problems of Washington DC. My point was that running a 21st century country with a workplace only using early 20th century technology isn’t what is needed here. Been there, done that with Bush.
The Blackberry is a symbol of a larger issue — and Buzzcut actually hits on an aspect of it: the bureaucratic culture (also partially coming from outdated notions about work and workplace).
As I’ve argued in previously, the workplaces changes being seen at places like the Big 4 Accounting Firms, Capital One, Bank of America, as well as the tech cos, are made possible because of new mobile, flexible technologies. The Blackberry is but one. But just adding technology didn’t make these firms more productive: it was a tool in a broader workplace change, breaking down hierarchies, getting people collaborating in formal and informal ways, and physically moving or removing walls.
Telling Obama he cannot have or should not have mobile technology represents a symbol of an attempt to hold on to an outdated idea of the White House workplace.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
From the Fireside chat to the Presidential blog, I love it!
Michael, agreed, that was my point my lack of “human intelligence”; not enough competence at the helm, if any at all. The most disturbing characteristic of the Bush administration has been the lack of talent in his agencies. Especially at the junior executive equivalent level. Im stark contrast, Obama’s team looks phenomenal!! For all of his eloquence, I liked Obama most from the beginning because I believed that he was a very smart guy who would be willing to listen and synthesize multiple points of view– he’s a down-to-earth pragmatic intellectual.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
People focus on FEMA’s incompetence in dealing with Katrina, but they also should consider the Coast Guard. That branch of the federal government adapted the Everglades flat-bottomed boat powered by a fan to the rescue of ships stuck in ice on the Great Lakes (one of those boats could get to a wreck site much more quickly than an ice-breaker). Then, in the time of Katrina they quickly had the idea to use those same boats to rescue people in New Orleans.
Instead of falling into the mindset of assuming that government is the bad guy, and instead of focusing on the Blackberry, I think the true challenge is to get more of the government to function like the Coast Guard
November 26th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Like I said, the military (all branches, and people do tend to forget about the Coast Guard) does a great job overall. Which leads to another point. For those who equate letting the Big 3 fail as a national security risk because the Big 3 represents our manufacturing core; the last time I checked, the Big 3 do not manufacture planes, tanks, ships or any other military hardware. We already have a bloated and essentially nationalized military industrial complex that does that. What a bogus argument!