What will the summer of 2016 be remembered for? The surprising outcome of the Brexit vote? Clinton vs. Trump and what is shaping up to be two exciting conventions in Philadelphia and Cleveland? For those, like me, who live and work in the Washington D.C. metro area, the summer of 2016 may well be remembered for the ongoing shutdown of the DC metrorail system. With a growing list of performance challenges — many of them safety related — the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) made the difficult decision to close significant portions of the rail system for overdue repairs and maintenance. In the meantime, millions of residents, workers, and tourists need to budget extra time as they navigate around our nation’s capital this summer.
Recently, while sitting in a traffic jam on the streets of D.C., I started to think about the important lessons learned from this summer’s metro shutdown. The current state of disrepair was certainly avoidable if the right investments in upkeep and infrastructure would have been made over the past 10 years. However, from my many years serving at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), I can recall how difficult it is to get key decision-makers to prioritize funds for basic maintenance. Many times we tried to make the case that a $100,000 repair today can help prevent a $1 million replacement tomorrow. Yet, too often, the $100,000 repair goes unfunded because the need is not immediate or urgent. Perhaps the story of the DC metro system will provide government facility managers and budgeteers with a powerful story of the dangers on de-prioritizing investments in infrastructure.
Core fitness flagging
For the U.S. government, the deleterious effects of unfunded deferred maintenance threaten many activities. A recent GAO report, for example, highlighted the potential risks if we fail to update the core legacy information technology (IT) systems that make up the backbone of government operations. According to GAO, “legacy IT investments across the federal government are becoming increasingly obsolete.” The report shines a light on how a lack of proper investment in keeping the government’s core technology systems up to date will ultimately cost the taxpayer — both in dollars and lower mission effectiveness.
GAO also aptly points out that success is not solely about more funding. Upgrading and maintaining our infrastructure successfully requires an array of different management disciplines. As GAO describes, “[t]he federal government has spent billions of dollars on failed and poorly performing IT investments which often suffered from ineffective management, such as project planning, requirements definition, and program oversight and governance.” I recently coauthored a report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) that reinforced this conclusion by looking at public sector organizations across the world and finding that roughly 70 percent to 80 percent modernization programs either fail or deliver mediocre results at best.
Breaking a vicious cycle
I’ve written before about the importance of workforce management to a higher performing government, but technology is equally critical. Underpinning the success of all critical government functions — e.g., keeping our skies, food, and borders safe — is both a skilled and trained workforce and a well functioning IT platform at their disposal. Imagine, for example, our air traffic control system without reliable technology to support it.
Yet, how do we secure the right investments to update an aging system infrastructure when the track record for managing successful upgrades is less than stellar? It’s important to remember that this is far from a lost cause. During the implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the federal government successfully stood up a new a nation–wide data reporting system with unprecedented speed. And despite the rough start for Healthcare.gov, its rapid recovery and turnaround demonstrates that when the right skills and disciplines are applied, the federal government can deliver.
In order to clear the path for new investments, the government must recognize that sub-par modernization efforts must increasingly become a thing of the past. As I noted along with my coauthors in the aforementioned BCG report, there are a variety of elements that frequently characterize great modernizations. For starters, policymakers need to look at transforming the organization as a whole — not just the systems. Transforming how the government operates involves digging into the way things are done within the agency or department and then rethinking the way that the services are actually delivered.
Focusing on flexibility is also key. Rather than involving a big, upfront investment, implementation should be conducted in small, manageable pieces, and high-value, low-risk components should be taken care of first. Plans also need to be adapted regularly on the basis of lessons learned. Another priority should be to select the right delivery partners. To this end, government leaders should consider using a scenario-based selection process in which a small number of possible suppliers outline how they would respond to several different situations and how their system would perform in each case.
Once selected, these partners need to abide by a proactive project management office, one that is forward-looking and identifies and tackles problems early on. But equally important is for leaders to continually communicate and work with key stakeholders during the course of a modernization project. Highly successful projects are focused on delivering maximum value from the project, rather than seeking consensus. And finally, you’ve got to overinvest in and recruit the right people and capabilities from the get-go — from both inside and outside government when necessary.
To help drive home the point about aging systems, GAO pointed out that floppy disks are still being used by the office that coordinates U.S. nuclear forces. As you will note from the opening paragraph of this piece, I chose a far less dramatic scenario to drive the point home — sitting in DC traffic. There are countless examples of how a deteriorating infrastructure can create risk. Moving forward, it’s not just about the budget analysts making the case on the cost of deferring maintenance for too long. The public sector must also raise its management game to add confidence that money to address aging infrastructure will be money well spent.
This comment is also published by the Centre for Public Impact, a BCG Foundation.
Building up the backbone of government operations
