Thursday, February 21. 2008

Quote of the Day - "Adding technology to a bad process..."

Jim Geringer, former governor of Wyoming and ESRI's director of policy and public sector, and speaking at ESRI's FedUC, had a few pointed words for those in the public sector who think technology solves most problems: "Adding technology to a bad process only adds speed to a very bad process," said Geringer. Geringer, during his time in office, recognized overlaps and redundancies to processes that could have benefited from best practices. He proded the audience to understand the nation's processes as a system. "GIS must provide a 'simple' way to explain the system and grasp the issues, said Geringer.

As an example, Geringer told the story of how as governor he was asked to evaluate a particular environmental problem. He received several reports some coming from his health department, the EPA and others. He asked, "Why can’t we have one report for this project?" After not receiving the answer he expected, he said, "W-E-L-L G-E-T O-N-E!"

While GIS may not eliminate the number of reports we get from various constituencies, it should be an imperative of our government, federal, state or local, to provide a common picture, a common base map and a common set of criteria to decision makers.

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No comments

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to	[ Top level ]
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information?   Subscribe to this entry