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How Will Governments Keep Up With Technology?
Andy Updegrove writes "Governments are beginning to realize that perhaps the Internet really has changed everything, at least for them, and that they are going to have to deal with new responsibilities in this area. How will they deal with financial and medical data breaches? What can they do to ensure that first responders will be able to communicate the next time that terrorists strike in the Homeland, and how will the refugees of the next Katrina be able to access their electronic medical records? And what must governments do to ensure that public records will be available in fifty years, if they no longer maintain paper archives? Whether government should incline towards leading, following or simply getting out of the way is a matter upon which there are likely to be strongly held differences of opinion. It's also likely, though, that government will not have the luxury of opting for the third choice in some of the areas just mentioned. How well government chooses among those roles, and how well it executes when it chooses to lead, will likely have a profound impact on our lives in the years ahead."
This is the government, right? They can just ask Jesus.
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
Along with this explosion of information, I wonder how governments will be able to maintain their collective grips on society as a whole. Never before has access to anti-government information been so readily available. Maybe they will have to rely on ever more draconian measures to maintain the status quo - but I hope not.
Technology requires new levels of accountability from government. The words that every politician dreads to hear... Open Government.
It's no longer acceptable or possible to hide inconvenient facts and delete damning emails. And the same Big Brother surveillance machine that governments are so enthusiastically creating is going to be watching them too. We will know when they meet in smokey backroom dealings, when they visit their prostitutes, who *exactly* issued an order that resulted in the deaths of innocents.
Hopefully the burden of responsibility it puts on the shoulders of elected representatives will be so high that it weeds out those who are mere power hungry psychopaths.
Government can hardly deliver my mail intact (USPS), competently educate my children (public schools), take care of my grandparent's health (Medicare), or ensure my retirement (the ridiculous failure that is Social Security).
Truckin like the Doo-Dah man...
Governments catching up with technology? Seriously, there's a lot of people who believe technology only originates or is engineered in someones garage, in the openness of acadamia, universities and research labs of major corporations.
First, Research and Development is akin to flushing money down the toilet; because it's not like an assembly line where you can accurately project shipped product at the end of the day. With Research and Development, you can go for decades and still have NOTHING. Keep this in mind, because the reality is, even Microsoft can't even afford a sustained and honest Research and Development lab. The ONLY people that have the TECHNOLOGY, AUTHORITY and WEALTH to handle such research is the GOVERNMENT. IF a company, university or individual presents something from research, 99.9% of the time that person was heavily funded by a GOVERNMENT entity; via contract or most commonly a federal grant.
Governments DO have all the technology. Without fueling the conspiracy theorist, yes, governments tend to have applied technology or even awareness of algorithms, methods, theories even before acadamia has such benefit; tons of cryptography, physics and organic chemistry for example.
MOST if not ALL technology is developed with ONE interest in mind. Military, and if it can give us an advantage. Ironically, this always boils down to a more efficient way of killing another man. We don't like this part of life, but military often does have fun with technology long before anyone else.
I'm sorry if I'm getting a little over-zealous. It just kills me knowing that there are many people who think the government is the bane of technology while corporations are were it all comes from. Minus federal funding or incentive, corporations ever since the East Indian Trading Company probably can soley account to ONE invention... and we can probably think real hard for that and probably debate this invention... stocks. That's IT! A socio-path CEO to some Company didn't voluntarily give his entire fortune for the sake of good-will and to fund research in making adhesives, anethetics, plastic, space travel, computers, guns, aspirin, paper, jet engines... or even a damn fiber glass fishing pole!
Companies wait for the government to de-classify technology, and shift through it looking for something that they feel they can market to the general public. Who do you think was behind developing the optical mouse... or, more specifically, who do you think has been behind 100% of all LASER research and application?
While it is very easy to take cheap shots at what the government can and can't do, the National Archives and Records Administration (http://www.archives.gov/) is taking a very proactive approach towards dealing with the long-term electronic records problem. NARA employs some of the most dedicated and highly trained archivists in the country, and this is one area where the government will probably lead.
Boy are you ever wrong. Military systems are often decades behind commercial products. The complexity of getting anything from government labs to fielded systems is so poor that its a wonder you ever see any output. The reason you see new concepts moving from government labs to commercial exploitation is because that's easier than military exploitation.
The funding of short term research by commercial interests is many times that of the military domain. What used to be better was long term research, but that has essentially been killed off to fund the wars we've been having. Don't hold your breath for much of the long term nature coming out of government funding in future.
Government can hardly deliver my mail intact (USPS), competently educate my children (public schools), take care of my grandparent's health (Medicare), ensure my retirement (the ridiculous failure that is Social Security).
I'm as down as the next guy about the state of health care coverage in the U.S., the problems both public and private pension systems are facing, and I probably have a better understanding than most about the problems of education having actually been in the classroom as a teacher. Every one of these institutions could use significant improvement.
But first off -- c'mon, USPS? How often *does* the gubmint lose or mangle your mail? I've had more negative encounters on that front with the private shippers (UPS and FedEx, I'm looking at you), and the number of things I've sent or received by US Mail is orders of magnitude larger.
And second of all, I think the standard "Government Can't Do Nothin' Right" rant is actually one of the most dangerous ideas floating around our society today. It is, plain and simple, completely corrosive to the ability to build effective public institutions. Somehow, we the people have gotten to the point where we *accept* the argument that it's OK for the Feds to turn in a D- performance when it comes to disaster relief -- because hey, government's never effective, so it's never their job. And we readily elect people who loudly vocalize the idea that there's no such thing as an effective public solution.
Why are we surprised that we don't have them? We're hiring vegetarian butchers to package and deliver the meat, folks.
You don't have to accept the idea that public institutions are the answer to everything. Markets are great tools, if you understand them rather than treating them as a panacea. Private non-profits can do a significant amount of good. Churches do too. And in general, healthy social communities just make everything better.
But everything in its place. Sometimes the right tool for the job is, in fact, a public institution. Sometimes, if you actually want to stablish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, what you're looking for is a government.
We need to stop assuming government can't do anything. We need to start asking how it can do better -- what can make public institutions run effectively.
Tweet, tweet.