Government runs on IT, regardless of who is in office

							Government runs on IT, regardless of who is in office




The nation is holding its collective breath over the upcoming elections, waiting to see
what the impact will be on Medicare, the deficit and national economic policy. One thing
that is not likely to change is that government will continue to run on IT regardless of
who is in office, and administrators do not appear to be worried about who is going to
win                                     in                                   November.

It isn’t politics but the need to deliver services on increasingly tight budgets that drives
technology purchasing at the federal, state and local levels, according to one recent
survey.


This finding is the result of an effort to prove a theory that initially appears so self-
evident that it needs no proof. “My theory was that administrations have an effect on
government technology purchases,” said Kimberly Samuelson, director of government
strategy for Laserfiche, an enterprise content management (ECM) vendor.

So she sent out a brief survey to the company’s customers and prospective customers.
The first question was: Will the upcoming presidential election affect tech purchases
within                                your                               organization?

“I would say my theory was wrong,” Samuelson said. “Eighty percent of responders said
no,      the     election    does     not     affect     technology       purchases.”

The survey probably falls short of being a statistically valid randomized sampling. The
530 responders represent about a 10 percent response rate from a collection of
contacts within an enterprise content management database. About 10 percent of
responders were federal officials, about 25 percent were state, and the rest were from
local government. But the lopsided conclusion is interesting, and at first glance
counterintuitive. Many of the respondents explained that their IT funding was not
dependent         on     political      appointees         or       elected     officials.

How can that be? Ultimately all government spending depends on appropriations
decided by elected officials, from Congress down to the county council and town board.
The answer is that the assumption was phrased wrong, Samuelson said. It is not a
matter of buying or not buying technology, it’s a matter of what kind of technology is
being                                                                         bought.

“People buy for different reasons under different administrations,” she said. But over
time                  it               all                 evens                   out.

Her experience from talking to Laserfiche customers is that social service
implementations now are “on the uptick.” But under a more hawkish law-and-order
administration the emphasis could easily swing to law enforcement technology. And
with deficit hawks in office, revenue generation and collection technology, such as land
management            tools,        is        likely       to         be        popular.

The bottom line from the survey is that budget pressure is the business driver for IT
purchases. “It was absolutely reducing cost,” Samuelson said. “Cost is the number one
issue          in         terms          of          what          they         buy.”

And budget pressure is something that is not likely to disappear no matter who wins in
November. Priorities might change from one administration to the next, but in guessing
what kinds of tools agencies will be investing in come 2013, it is safe to say that it will
be those that can demonstrate a return on investment. Vive le ROI.