In my last post I talked about pace of change in the IT world. There is no doubt that we have seen enormous gains in every aspect of IT development and usage, but… I have to say the thing I hate most is change that seems to be done just for the sake of change… at least that is how it seems to me whenever I open a new version of my working software to discover that some brainchild somewhere decided that those menu items that I used to know so intimately needed to be moved … to some place where, in his/her vision, they would be of better use to me.

So what took me 2 minutes to do, now takes 45 minutes, most of it spent searching for the menu tool to do that 2-minute job. I can’t say if developers do much work with users before they change the location of things, but I can say that I wish they would leave well enough alone so that those of us who use programs on a daily basis – and who have bosses who expect us to accomplish a much larger amount of work than we used to, given the technology tools available – could get on with it.

No doubt about it, IT has impacted the productivity of the workforce in a positive fashion and government procurement staff are striving to make sure we all have the most up to date tools possible to get our work done… and truthfully, we all get excited about having a new computer or software to use. Then reality strikes and many find ourselves frustrated because we cannot do quickly what we did before… and may even need to take time away from our desks for special training. I do wish that the productivity of users could be a factor when considering the redesign of software. Users unite!!! Let the developers know that sometimes we like some things just to stay the same.

Recently on blog radio, I was asked about the perception of procurement today as opposed to 10 years ago when we began Summit: Canada’s magazine on public sector purchasing. It has changed.

One of the driving factors of creating the magazine in the first place, was that, as contract publishers, we found ourselves continually educating our government customers on how to do business with us in a changing technology environment. 

Web publishing, print on demand, and tools like CDs were all quite new 10 years ago (to someone over 50 that is pretty amazing). As publishers, we had to learn how to use the technology to survive as a small business and to educate our potential clients about the technology and its benefits to them. While excited about the potential of IT solutions, the procurement staff in charge of purchasing our professional services did not yet appreciate how technology would change their lives and the work they were trying to do.

Just to go back to the magazine for a moment; we felt that a magazine that would bring the innovations, best practices and challenges in various areas of the public sector to the desks of procurement professionals everywhere in Canada would help them do business better and improve the public sector market for Canadian business. We have done that and because of the pervasive role of IT, much of our content has been devoted to the development and procurement of IT tools, solutions and professional services. 

There were tons of challenges over the past 10 years in the purchasing of IT… it is no secret that many public sector IT projects did not succeed… at least not in the sense we thought they would. After all, it is pretty hard to conduct an IT project using traditional tools, processes and measurement when everything about IT changes so fast.  By change, I don’t just mean the hardware and software itself, but the clients that information technology is purchased for become very sophisticated very quickly in their private lives. Government is extremely challenged to keep up to their expectations. Most times it cannot, and so we perceive failure. This may be one of the biggest challenges still facing IT procurement today. Reining in expectations is not easy.

Most of us can purchase for ourselves a new computer, cell phone, mobile devices, TVs and the attendant software, so we get to try the newest and best fairly frequently, but consider that the public sector must look at thousands of new machines, new phones or mobile devices and software and licences and the follow on systems integration and support, to say nothing of training and possible legislation changes and organization restructuring. It becomes easier to appreciate that the public sector will continually have to scramble just to try to be anywhere close to current when it comes to technology.  To their credit, procurement staff does strive to meet the internal client demand while balancing the need against the desire.