Is the Holy Grail for 2010 "Reducing cost whilst increasing efficiency"?
As we approach the end of 2009, what is or should be our fresh perspective for 2010?
We have changed the focus from Y2K to e-Gov, T-Gov and different numbers of “allowed definitions”, but I seem to sense that the real perspective in 2010 will be some form of “Saving money whilst simultaneously improving efficiency”.
This is the gauntlet being thrown down by Political leaders and not just in the UK. We might be witnessing harnessed impatience driving a sharp focus where Political leaders, many of whom have no interest in understanding IT, just want to see a step change, a leap forward and a major improvement in the results from the equation “Efficiencies gained” ÷ “Cost” = “ROI” ….. and one that tangibly changes the lives of citizens.
How? Where does one look? Where can one even start?
A software company cannot know what the users of its software know. Confirm sells to 10 distinguishable professions within the Government landscape whose members devote their working lives to improving operational techniques, Codes of Practice and sometimes Legislation to improve the lives of citizens they serve.
We can learn how to grow great ideas
Confirm users are often innovative and unseen in creating new and more efficient ways of using our software. They often notice areas of the software where repetitive procedures could be streamlined or even automated. This is a fact that has applied to all software systems in the past and will persist through time.
I believe that the real key to finding those innovative ideas lies in a close and unfiltered mind-share between people who do the job and people who write the software
So the step-change may come from concentrated dialogue between experts in software design and everyday users rather than elaborate and hopeful rhetoric. The real value in a multitude of exchanges of ideas between operational staff conducting the everyday roles and software code-writers: between the people at one coal-face and the people at another coal-face.
We might all ask ourselves if our new year’s resolution could be our new year’s revolution.
Within the “Confirm lot” at PBBI many of us will be continuing the work started this year with the our users in enhancing the many dialogue and idea exchange forums (is this fora, for those who speak Latin?) we have and introducing some new ideas.
Save money AND increase efficiency? I think that is the whole point of software and I think I see it becoming a bluntly defined battle cry in 2010.
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