Technology changes rapidly, but the mindset of organizations and their leaders does not usually keep up.
That situation needs to change, writes Federal Communications Commission CIO David Bray, in a recent blog post at the Brookings Institute website. The post, part of Brookings’ “Ideas to Retire” series, argues that agency leaders need to be free to experiment, and sometimes, to fail in the course of innovation.
BONUS: David Bray recently hosted a Federal Times webcast on IT Transformation. Go here to view it on-demand.
“Whereas the motto in Silicon Valley and other innovation hubs around the world might be ‘fail fast and fail often,’ such a model is not going to work for public service, where certain endeavors absolutely must succeed and cannot waste taxpayer funds,” Bray writes.
However, he continues, such “dangerous experiments” are “[t]he only way public sector technologists will gain the expertise needed to respond to and take advantage of the digital disruptions occurring globally.”
The federal government needs leaders willing to empower the change agents within their organizations in order to make the most of a fast-moving world, he writes. “There is no textbook for how to best do public service in an exponential era of rapid technological and social change.”
