Thread by @allafarce

I've been wrestling with this idea for the past week or so that I'm having trouble articulating without being overly abstract, but let me try:

I think much of the pain we see in "bad technology" (esp. in government) is the myth that it's a free lunch — "solutions" without costs.

The problem is that any effective benefits that come from adding technology in some area *do* come with tradeoffs — they're just often unspoken tradeoffs, taken for granted by organizations with technology at their core.

Here are a few examples:

User-centered design: I think a lot of people construe (and/or sell) it as a set of methods that just "makes things better".

But the tradeoff is real: it's in decisionmaking, in power.

Having *users* guide decisions means other stakeholders wield less power. That's real.

(It's particularly real in the context of spaces like public policy and administration.

Actual end-users — clients, beneficiaries, citizens, residents, etc. — are a subset of stakeholders.

But you can't be user-centered *and*, say, taxpayer-centered.)

Example 2: the "automation" myth

Organizations with technology in their DNA (eg leadership background) take as given that automation has limits to its complexity, *and* requires deep, full specification.

A process with a lot of human judgment *can't* be automated.

A lot of the worst IT disasters I've seen in government have come from the presumption of automating at scale (via technology) processes that are:
- Underspecified
- Require more human judgment than admitted in RFPs

(obligatory nod to @PopTechWorks' work here)

@PopTechWorks Many government agencies are resource-stretched and it makes total sense that if someone (say, a large IT vendor) is saying you can automate all these processes for a simple up-front cost you'd want to do it.

But without understanding the devil in those details, it's a disaster.

@PopTechWorks So the tradeoffs of automation are:

1. Reduced human judgment, which requires...
2. VERY DETAILED specification of rules

And for automation to be low-cost, it really needs to be:

3. A relatively low-complexity set of rules

@PopTechWorks Which leads me to Example 3:

The cost savings of technology really only come if you're technologizing *simple* things.

Having done a fair bit of engineering I worry so much about how many decisionmakers seem to think tech cost scales linearly with complexity. It doesn't!!1

@PopTechWorks I think I've come around to the vantage point of an Unholy Trinity™ in large technology projects:

1. Quality
2. Complexity
3. (Low) Cost

You get to choose 2.

@PopTechWorks Most private tech companies tend to choose quality and low cost.

Government often *tries* to get all 3 — often, I think, because the "complexity" is table stakes. "That's policy. We don't touch that."

It often pursues complexity so deeply that it abandons both quality and cost.

@PopTechWorks This is not a moral judgment (private good! govt bad!) at all.

But private companies tend to face worse repercussions for low quality and/or high cost.

Govt tends to face worse repercussions for reducing complexity. ("That's non-compliant!" "That's illegal!")

@PopTechWorks I think I'm increasingly coming around to the conclusion that government cannot effectively use technology until decisionmakers collectively agree to abandon the "free lunch" myth and take seriously about the tradeoffs. Internet-era orgs bake in this tradeoffs from day 1.

@PopTechWorks We need to get away from the idea that technology is the answer to the question:

"Can I make things better — but without changing anything?"

The answer is: no.

@PopTechWorks Anyway, thanks for letting me think out loud about this.

(And apologies @PopTechWorks I realize once I mentioned you it kept you in this boat and I literally cannot figure out how to from replies in the Twitter web UI, ugh.)