The State of Wyoming is on the cusp of a new era in which we are perfectly positioned to take advantage of a number of opportunities. From the investment in the NCAR Supercomputer; the issues surrounding Carbon Capture and Sequestration and the new School of Energy Resources; to the value that could be realized from integrated governmental processes providing “one version of the truth” to the Wyoming Legislature and the citizens of Wyoming; many of these opportunities can be logically grouped under one heading: Technology, Reporting and Analytics.
Most of Wyoming’s governmental agencies, especially the larger ones, have a standing committee that they work closely with, other than the Joint Appropriations Committee, in terms of policy and direction. One glaring exception is the Department of Administration and Information with its half billion dollar budget, and links to virtually every nook and cranny of state government. Another agency which would logically interact with this standing committee, would be the Department of Audit.
While many of the agencies have spent millions of dollars on technology to improve and implement government systems to accomplish their mission, no one has oversight over the whole system. There is enormous value to be gained in terms of efficiency, transparency, and citizen access…not to mention millions, if not billions of taxpayer savings to be gained by the implementation of good, solid systems, standards, and security. Chief amongst the technological challenges are the plethora of outdated and disparate legacy systems and interfaces, the lack of integration, and inefficient processes on all levels. What we need is a single view of the State, and a single view of the citizen through unified enterprise resource planning. We need to improve service, increase social responsibility, and improve operations with centralized defect reporting and incident tracking, integrated infrastructure maintenance and management, and online operating-budget preparation, not to mention enhanced governance and reduced fraud by enabling audit trails of transactions, cost transparency, and detailed exception reporting. We need to realize value by integrating, streamlining, and reducing the cost of delivering equitable services.
Other governments around the world have realized enormous gains by taking these steps—for instance, the City of Cape Town, South Africa, consolidated a bunch of small towns into one unified entity, and implemented technology to support it, and in so doing added more than $105 million to their bottom line, increased their cash reserves by $115 million, and gained more than $100 million in additional savings and income—in their first year of operation! That is only one of many examples. Global corporations figure that every single paper form costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time someone produces the form, vets it and gets it approved, distributes it to the end users where it is filled out manually, submitted, approved, processed and filed, and then somebody has to be responsible for storage, and access, and being able to retrieve it when necessary—it is easy to see where technological advances, and solid, integrated systems can produce enormous value in any large scale system. This cannot be achieved without dedicated oversight, and a multi-year approach.
Finally, as the most part-time of part-time citizen Legislatures, we are hampered by the lack of time, and resources, when it comes to the effective audit of entire agencies. The current Management Audit process is only capable of looking at it program by program, not on an agency wide basis—which is the only way we’ll ever by able to get at those deep-seated systemic flaws in state government. Consistent, reliable, and timely reporting is absolutely essential to the proper analysis of any system…be it in government, or business. The only way to reach the ideal “one version of the truth” is to ensure that you have established the right metrics, and that all metrics are being measured in the same way throughout state government, and not only measured, but reported on a consistent basis. All of this cries for an integrated system that allows individual agencies the autonomy they need to maximize the technology dollars they have already invested, while integrating with other agencies, and other branches of government in terms of reporting and analytics.
There is currently a Select Committee on Legislative Technology charged with enhancing the Legislature’s computer, audio/video and website technology, which has never met since I was appointed to it, and that could easily and logically be folded into this new standing committee. The current Select Management Audit responsibilities would also fit here. Besides providing oversight and direction to the Department of Administration and Information, there are other issues that could logically reside under this umbrella like Telecommunications, and of course, issues surrounding the State’s technological infrastructure, the NCAR Supercomputer, the establishment and regulation of Data Warehouses, and so forth. This would be a good committee to work with the Revenue Committee on issues like the Streamlined Sales Tax, and the technological issues around collecting sales tax on internet sales. It would be a good committee to work with the Agriculture Committee and/or the Select Water Committee on the technological issues around obtaining and analyzing good data having to do with water issues. Our state systems need to be able to access, and be able to allow for the assimilation and analysis of data from outside sources—from global positioning systems, to federal databases, to research and development systems. The list goes on and on, but the fact is in today’s government, business, and citizen environment, nearly every aspect has an underlying technological component.
For all of these reasons, a good argument can be made that it is time for the Wyoming Legislature to dedicate the time, resources, and people to a standing committee capable of gaining the expertise and holistic view necessary to guide and enhance the technological systems so necessary to Wyoming’s long-term prosperity.
