Essentially I learned that IT is not what we think it is. At least not when it comes to its application in public sector organizations. The impression that many of us have of IT is that of a young guy coming to the boss' office with a great new idea of how some computer application, network or new technology is going to provide such a revolutionary advantage that the entity will make zillions of dollars or meet its mission more so than all of its competitors.
While the companies that I work for never had that happen, I will agree that many organizations are run by managers who have this impression of IT. What compounds this problem are managers who don't know much about how the internet works and therefore wouldn't know how to appropriately utilize emerging technologies. This class sought to stop us from becoming one of those managers.
The class project challenged us to think of a way that IT would actually help an organization. Many times, you hear someone talking about how it would be so much more efficient for a non-profit or government entity to hire an IT guy to bring them into the 21st century. Everyone thinks that things like facebook are the wave of the future, so companies rush to open their own Facebook page and join in the benefits of this supposed magic IT answer. I guess its not that easy. Facebook allows for on-line communities to flourish especially when centered around a cause, objective or common interest. Do managers understand that while the cost of opening an account is free, facebook is not free for the organization! In order to have a chance at being effective, someone must administer the site in order to make sure that current themes of interest are constantly displayed. After all, who would visit the United Way facebook page (more than once or twice) if it always had the same things listed? And what would they be going to facebook to learn that they could not learn from the United Way website? What's pulling people to the facebook page? You can't just implicitly assume that all of these questions would work themselves out because IT solves all problems. Someone must take their time to make sure that the United Way facebook page actually does something to help (and not hurt) the organizations ability to reach its mission. Unless that person is going to work for free, than there is an associated cost. Thus, United Way, must decide whether a facebook page will add any kind of value to their organization.
Being able to work through the activity allows one to learn these sorts of things better so than if they simply found them in a text book. I only wish that the project could have taken more classroom time. While I think that the other activities were interesting and informative, the project was really where much of the learning was. There are certain things that have the potential to actually help you in the world of offices and decision making. This project really hits this well. When it comes to the planning process, I think that additional classroom activity could help to get everyone on the same page. Because it was a class on technology, it was easy to think that the goal of the project was to utilize technology. I assert that the goal is to find a way for a non-profit or government entity to better meet its mission with technology simply as a vehicle. "Better" can mean more efficiently, safely, politically expediently or in any other way that might matter to a key stakeholder. The technology being utilized was just a means to an end.
When it comes to learning to work as a team, it is important to establish roles early on and meet in person at the beginning of the process. Furthermore, milestones must be set so that presentation time is not the moment of truth. Everyone on the team should have a good idea of their concept and feel confident in it by the end of the semester. I would make sure that I took it upon myself to do these things in the future. With that stated, I think that the end result turned out to be a great improvement in clarity of the finished product, it would have been nice to have that confidence at presentation time. On teams, everyone is at the graduate level, bright and wants to do a good job. Yet, with all of the different working styles, an understanding must be met early.
As for the E-government part of the class, as can be observed in my blogs, I thought the class was very interesting. These are the things that the future gov't leaders are going to have to address. Like Pat Sine brought up, the E-government section sought to answer questions of how do we know that IT is more efficient, transparent or even the best thing for society. If these kinds of things aren't thought threw, the consequences can be even more disastrous than a lackluster presentation.
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