Should governments sell their information?
This fall I’m working for the City of Toronto, doing a strategy and business architecture for Information Management.
I try to give unbiased advice when consulting, but one of my clients knows that I have left-leaning politics. So we ended up discussing everything from Dave Meslin‘s citizen engagement initiatives to the gay penguins. More relevantly, should the government sell information (as done for certain specialized but not confidential data), or give it away freely (as in the Open Data program), or recover some costs (as for Freedom of Information requests)?
The price of information is a political question of whether taxpayers or users should pay for a public service. Although government information is a public asset, it does cost money to collect and prepare it for distribution. I will be proposing that the City set some criteria for which information should be given away freely, and which should be sold, and how prices should be set. The public can benefit from government revenue as well as from free information, so a balance needs to be struck.
This is a familiar issue to me, having worked at Statistics Canada. Their cost recovery policy has been controversial, but researchers continue to use StatsCan information, and basic statistics are still available to everyone for free.
In praise of libraries
Today I started a new contract at the City of Toronto. They need some business architecture and strategy work done about Information Management. Public sector IM is my specialty; my first job was in a municipal library (I typed and filed paper catalog cards into the Title, Author and Subject drawers.)
So on my lunch break, I popped into the Urban Affairs Library at Metro Hall. Ironically this was the last day the branch was open. I found an interesting book about public administration, but unfortunately it was a non-circulating item. At least the fantastic Urban Affairs collection will still be available at the Toronto Reference Library.
Torontonians are not the only people who love their libraries. A series of mysterious paper sculptures have been showing up in Scottish libraries. I like making altered books too.
Lunch for 300? I made it happen.
In my spare time, I volunteer for a social justice organization. Usually I sit in meetings, finding the logic problems in the bylaws or applying Project Portfolio Management to committee priorities.
This weekend was a bit more active: I catered a meal for about 300 people (one hundred more than planned). Our food & supplies came in under our $300 budget, thanks to a vegetarian menu, discount produce, food donations and expert estimates of quantities. Yesterday and today I managed about two dozen volunteers as we bought, prepared, served and cleaned up the food. There were a few crises along the way, but there was enough food for everyone, and we collected over $700 in donations.
At the “recovery” dinner, my fortune cookie read “You have both a lot of ideas and the energy to put them into action”.
In-depth public participation in policy-making
I spent this morning at GovCamp, discussing transparency, public participation and open-data initiatives. It was interesting to have public servants interacting with the more political people on the outside. The openness advocates don’t necessarily understand that there are legislative, as well as cultural, reasons why bureaucracy is so risk-averse.
The most intriguing talk was from Peter MacLeod of MASS LBP. He pointed out that the fashion for brief public participation activities (opinion polling, online commenting, town halls and Facebook forwarding) is not making for a great democracy. He gave an example where a group of citizens volunteered to spend a few entire weekends in meetings, learning about a topic in depth, to make good recommendations on a complex policy matter. I love it! Public policy really is complicated, and the best decisions are not made by voting for Slogan A or Slogan B.
GovCamp unconference
On June 8, I will be attending GovCamp Canada 2011, an un-conference about innovation in the public sector. It’s free of charge, and happening in the very cool MaRS building downtown Toronto.
Working in the public interest
When I became an independent consultant, I was hoping to continue working in the public interest. I’m glad to report that I’ve helped people and the environment by being involved with:
- protection of endangered species
- conservation of ecologically important land
- energy efficiency for retail stores
- better & cheaper technology for small health service providers
- enforcing preventative health laws
- transparency for buyers of financial products
- improving customer service & accuracy for government licenses
- easier campsite reservations
Yes, I literally have been working to make people “happy campers”!
Getting busy!
Currently I’m working for the Ministry of Natural Resources, on the details of their Parks Reservation & Registration System. I will also soon be working on an information management project in the health sector.
Apparently there is a shortage of contractors to do Business Architecture in the Ontario government. If you’ve got relevant background (such as government business analysis or systems architecture), I offer one-on-one tutoring.
Available soon
My work on the Road User Safety Modernization project is winding down in October, so I will soon be available.
Metimea is a consulting practice, so I want to fit you in when you need me! Thus I am accepting part-time assignments (up to 4 days/week). If you need an ongoing occasional advisory service, or a short burst of work on a deliverable, drop me a line.
This change will also allow me to take more classes at the Toronto School of Art. I’m studying for a Fine Arts Diploma, and have some ideas for blending artwork and Enterprise Architecture.
Tension between EA and the PMO
One of the themes at the recent EA Symposium was tension between Enterprise Architecture departments and Project Management Offices. High-quality long-term architecture sometimes gets in the way of delivering projects quickly & cheaply. Many participants were struggling with internal politics, to get governance structures to balance architecture and project needs.
My presentation gave some analytical approaches for comparing EA and PM methodologies, and recommended a synchronized, holistic approach to governing both. If we acknowledge their differences, we can respect the contributions of both.
Enterprise Architecture: Business and Technology sides
At the EA Symposium, there was much discussion of what it means to be an Enterprise Architect.
Is this an Information Technology-focused discipline? Scott Ambler said in his keynote that an enterprise architect will only be respected if they can code!
The EA discipline is in fact an outgrowth of IT. Technical people realized that using common technologies across the enterprise can save money & reduce risk. Technical people also realized that they need to know business requirements, not just at system-project level but at the enterprise-strategy level.
But just because technical people can describe the business and its strategy doesn’t mean they are being asked to decide the strategy.
Architects often wish to be on the business side of the organization, not part of the IT department, so they can be more influential. Business managers may perceive this as an attempted power grab, by people who often don’t know or understand all the business issues, but who can certainly make things look complicated and arcane.
I do believe that we business and information architects should be on the business side. We should be tasked with describing the business rigorously, and recommending ways to optimize it. We can use many formal techniques, not just the Architecture toolbox. We should have some business experience, not just technical knowledge.
I also believe that the IT department should retain its application, technology, solution and security architects. These senior technical people should describe the technology environment rigorously, and recommend ways to optimize technology across the enterprise. And yes I think these people should have programming (or other technical) experience!
The Systematic Enterprise
I will be speaking on March 30 at the Enterprise Architecture Symposium in Toronto. Here’s an abstract of my talk:
The Systematic Enterprise: How to synchronize EA, PM and other management methods
There are lots of frameworks and methods promising to make your organization more efficient and effective: EA, PMBoK, PPM, BPM, ITSM, CMM and on and on. They may be advocated by different departments, but they all aim to translate your enterprise vision into reliable, customer-centric results.
- Learn to align your organization’s formal management methods
- See an example: project management phases mapped to the TOGAF and Zachman EA frameworks
- Be inspired to take a holistic approach to enterprise governance
If you are interested in attending, let me know so I can pass on the discount code.
Comments on business architecture ideas from Tom Graves
Tom Graves had an interesting (and extensive) guest post on John Polgreen’s blog. Some ideas I was glad to see him advocate:
- Describe an enterprise’s vision, mission and goals, before getting into anything related to IT.
- Use a Results Logic diagram (also known as a Program Logic Model) to confirm that an enterprise’s activities are likely to meet its mission and goals.
- The “enterprise” includes external organizations: suppliers, clients and other stakeholders. The architecture should show how they are involved, motivated and accountable. (It might not show details of how they do their business.)
On Graves’ post, I also commented about ways to customize the TOGAF ADM architecture cycle, such as having multiple governance approvals or iterations.
Writing & editing better documents
Good writing is a very important quality in a consultant, especially one who writes definitions and other text meant to endure. So I have been taking steps to finesse my ability to write effective documents in correct English.
Most useful has been The Pyramid Principle, a method adopted by various big consulting firms, also available as a library book. It’s teaching me to put my important points up front, and to introduce my text with a statement the reader can agree with.
In November I went to the Eight-Step Editing course. It was fun to be in a room full of people who cared about punctuation. The course taught very good techniques for clarifying sentences, and it touched upon paragraph structure. We discussed adaptation for the audience and environment, such as tolerating the passive voice in government, and using big words in academia.
For large-scale editing of a document’s purpose, organization and substance, the Pyramid Principle is much more relevant than the editing course.
Follow me on Twitter
If you use Twitter, you can follow me at twitter.com/metimea.
Methodology paralysis
“Analysis paralysis” is a common affliction of systems projects. People want to get one thing perfect before they move onto the next.
Now I’m seeing “methodology paralysis”. People want to plan exactly how they will do a perfect analysis, before they even start.
Sometimes you just have to start doing something. If it doesn’t come out perfect the first time, revise. You have to try some bad methods before you can identify the good method.
Analyst as lawyer, doctor and accountant
Being a business architect or analyst in government means I often need to interpret legislation or understand legal procedure. I’ve often wondered if I should become qualified as a lawyer, or just continue playing one on TV.
Today I’m trying to untangle a financial process model. Now I get to pretend to be an accountant! A few months ago, I needed to be a car or truck mechanic to understand the people I was interviewing.
Occasionally I get to analyze the health system or medical concepts. I don’t think I’ll become a doctor any time soon.
