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."

Comments

Easy

[fatduck]

This is the government, right? They can just ask Jesus.

Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It can't.

[Baba Ram Dass]

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).

The Death of Belief in Public Institutions

[weston]

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.