Dan Chenok

We are pleased to announce our latest round of stipends for new reports on key public sector challenges, which respond to the priorities identified in the Center's research agenda. Our content is intended to stimulate and accelerate the production of practical research that benefits public sector leaders and managers. We expect the following reports to be published in early 2021.

Creating Public Value with the Internet of Intelligent Things by Gwanhoo Lee, American University

Given the ever-increasing demand for health care services and health technology innovations that have only gained in import in addressing COVID-19, government plays a critical role in delivering services to a diverse population through a wide range of health-related programs.

As economies and societies transform in response to COVID-19 and its aftermath, governments in the US and around the world seek innovations that enable them to interact with the public, industry, and each other -- addressing both immediate social and economic needs for services and longer-term imperatives for operational effectiveness.

Guest Blogger, Adam Houck, IBM Global Postal Practice Leader, Academy of Technology Leadership Team

COVID-19 has and will continue to have a devastating financial effect on the world’s postal services. At the same time, postal services have significant roles to play in the response and recovery effort. However, these efforts will not be enough to offset the financial impacts of COVID-19.

To respond to this global crisis, postal services must do three things:

“Shared Services” -- cross-agency approaches for delivering mission support services like human resources (HR) and financial management (FM) more effectively and efficiently, remains a key initiative for agencies.  In today’s environment, government programs must shift almost daily in response to unprecedented public health and economic stimulus priorities.  Shared services have become even more imperative as a means of enhancing reliability and outcomes in support operations and enabling agencies to focus on mission priorities.

(This post draws its story largely from a prior IBM Center report, Encouraging and Sustaining Innovation in Government, by Beth Noveck and Stefaan Verhulst.)

Vignette 1:  FirstGov (now USA.Gov). In 1999, Eric Brewer -- Internet search pioneer and CEO of the search company Inktomi (which developed search long before Google) met President Clinton at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.  Brewer had what was a revolutionary idea at the time – organize all government information in a single search engine, accessible through a single portal, for free.

This post was written by guest bloggers: Justin Cole, Managing Consultant, IBM and Layne Morrison, Senior Managing Consultant, IBM

The “why”

Digital transformation drives new models of doing business – including the ‘business’ of government - as external and internal forces drive unprecedented disruption.

What differentiates this new model?

The US government provides critically needed services through programs in each agency across the nation each day, to a scale of millions of people.  Families receive social security checks, students receive support to attend college, small businesses receive loans – the list goes on and on.  At the same time, the very scale of government services means that a problem in program delivery impacts a very significant portion and geographic scope of the nation.  And such problems echo as advocacy groups, oversight bodies, and media raise legitimate questions about what went wrong, even given the

Co-Blogger: John Marshall, Founder and CEO, Shared Services Leadership Coalition