Monday, September 14. 2009

Would the ideas of Gov 2.0 work for business?

Watching the Gov 2.0 Summit presentations this past week tweaked my mind about what technology should do, not just for government agencies, but for business. Tim O'Reilly's model of "government as a platform" goes directly to some of the business process improvement methodologies that businesses have longed to attain.

O'Reilly uses the analogy of the Apple iPhone as a platform for applications developed by programmers outside of Apple as his vision for what government should be able to facilitate for citizenry: build the platform...let the citizens take it from there. And he is not just hoping that federal agencies will find ways to work better together but for intergovernmental agencies as well such as federal to state, state to local, local to citizens, etc.

Would this model work for business? Would businesses share data and some of their internal IT platforms with partners, perhaps in a cloud computing environment? Some already put data "outside the firewall" for sharing but how many businesses build their IT model with the idea that shared data is a foundation for business expansion and efficiency?

Walmart was first recognized for using RFID technology to monitor inventory and "advising" their suppliers to adopt ways to conform with its inventory and logistics control procedures. Inventory data was shared with suppliers; orders were automatically placed and shipped to distribution centers. But for O'Reilly's vision to be transformed into standard business practice I think an entirely new level of trust might have to be developed between business partners.

That's not to say that it can't be done and in this economic climate it may be a necessity. It's a model that needs more thought and exploration. Andrea DiMaio of Gartner provided the reasons why government cannot act as a platform and you can use these arguments as a check list as to why business platforms may or may not work.

Posted by Joe Francica in Location Intelligence, Apple, Cloud Computing at 11:12 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |