Leadership in the Post-Y2K World

ntil recently, senior government officials and politicians have usually avoided information technology challenges. Public leaders are forced to pick and choose their battles. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, they typically viewed IT as over-hyped-a technology matter rather than a leadership matter-and not worth the risks of personal involvement.

The Internet and electronic commerce are changing all that with a vengeance. Today's leaders cannot afford to look stupid about the "new economy," nor can they safely delegate everything. This war has become too important to be left to the generals. Our communities and government agencies need help identifying and understanding options, clarifying guiding values and resolving conflicts. In short, we need leadership.

Unfortunately, many public leaders-managers, program directors, and politicians-are confused and conflicted about what to do. They need guidelines.

In response, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government has worked for the past three years with a group of public- and private-sector leaders to develop such a set of guidelines. Representing the governmental equivalent of chief executive officers and chief information officers, along with academics, the group has drawn on expertise from Canadian and American government. It examined case studies to see how real-world experience challenges and extends theory and condensed its findings in a report called "Eight Imperatives for Leaders in a Networked World" (www.ksg.harvard.edu/stratcom/hpg/index.htm).

The group is working to publish a series of papers explaining each imperative, including diagnostic exercises to help any public-sector organization identify where it stands on IT leadership challenges and what should be done.

The first four imperatives require leaders to develop and extend network-enabled services-what might be called the e-government agenda. The territory to be covered is vast, but the map of where we are headed is clear. To succeed, leaders must:

1. Focus on how IT can reshape work and public-sector strategies. In a confusing world, focusing on the right problems is critical. The problems most significant to leaders-as they long have been-are those of structure and strategy. What's new is the importance of net-based structures and strategies.

2. Use IT for strategic innovation, not simply tactical automation. Governments must become learning organizations. While reengineering has become unpopular and passé, reinvention remains essential. Amazon.com is not automating traditional bookstores, but developing an entirely new way of shopping.

3. Use best practices for implementing IT initiatives. We know more now than we did before, so we don't need to fail as often. As the success of John Koskinen's Y2K work showed, implementation requires engaged and skillful political leadership, not just technology expertise.

4. Improve budgeting and financing. The big hits for IT are typically from innovative multi-year investments on a cross-program, cross-jurisdiction or even cross-sector basis. Government budgets miss too many of these opportunities.

The final four imperatives address even more fundamental challenges to communities and governmental institutions-what might be called the e-governance agenda. The territory is huge and not well mapped. Discussion, dialogue, education and research are needed. To succeed, leaders must:

5. Protect privacy and security. These are the "time bomb" issues of a networked world, where almost anybody can gain technological access to almost anything. We face anew the constitutional task of balancing the rights of individuals against those of other individuals and of the communities to which they all belong.

6. Form IT-related partnerships to stimulate economic development. Good lifestyles depend on good jobs, which come not from the public or private sector acting independently but from cooperation in a global electronic economy. Smart Utah, Silicon Valley and Singapore all offer important models for partnerships in promoting economic development models.

7. Use IT to promote equal opportunity and healthy communities. As cyberspace communities grow in economic, psychological, sociological and political importance, we must better understand and respond to risks of isolation, alienation and inequity. Governance must nurture fundamental human needs for contact and community.

8. Prepare for digital democracy. Governance is not just about output or services but also input-the politics that shape and apply the will of the people. Learning how networks can and should influence politics in the broadest sense is a big and important problem.

The core message of the eight imperatives for leaders is "get informed and get involved."

While many leaders have not yet done this, some have become trailblazers. They have repeatedly stood up and debated their views in public, showing the way for effective executive involvement in technology-related issues. Their leadership has helped prepare us all for the next wave.

Jerry Mechling is founder and director of the Program on Strategic Computing and Telecommunications in the Public Sector at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and works with the Harvard Policy Group on Network-Enabled Services and Government.