Showing posts with label Mitt Romney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mitt Romney. Show all posts

November 15, 2007

"Inefficient Government" and Enterprise Architecture

The Wall Street Journal, 10-11 November 2007 reports on an interview with Mitt Romney, Former Massachusetts Governor and U.S. Presidential Candidate 2008:

  • Government is inefficient—“government is almost by necessity inefficient, inflexible, duplicative, wasteful, expensive, and burdensome,”
  • Government structure is wrong—regarding the organization chart of the executive branch, “there’s no corporation in America that would have a CEO, no COO, just a CEO with 30 direct reports, so I would probably have super-cabinet secretaries, or at least some structure that McKinsey would put in place.”
  • Government needs more consultants—“I’m not kidding, I probably would bring in McKinsey…I would consult with the best and the brightest minds, whether it’s McKinsey, Bain, BCG, or Jack Welch.”
  • Government is inaction—“My wife says that watching Washington is like watching to guys in a canoe on a fast-moving river headed to a waterfall and they’re not paddling, they’re just arguing. As they get closer to the waterfall, they’ll finally start to paddle.

Whether or not you completely agree with Mitt Romney or similar commentary and criticisms from other political candidates, pundits, or office holders, there certainly appears to be plenty of work for User-centric EA to tackle.

EA can help government and the private sector to improve efficiency and effectiveness through business process improvement, organizational restructuring, performance measurement, information sharing, and advancing technology solutions for the most difficult business challenges we face.

Also, I’m not sure I agree that we need more consultants or that we already don’t have the “best and brightest” in the millions of government employees and contractors that we already have. It sure seems like we have every consulting company under the sun here in Washington, D.C.—and they all charge a pretty penny :)

True, government is large, but the problems we face are also large—terrorism, world-wide human rights, energy dependence, global warming, global economic competition (from low-wage countries), budget deficits, bankrupted social programs (like social security and Medicare), crisis in healthcare, and so on. It’s easy to criticize, but difficult to come up with constructive solutions. Isn’t that what politics is all about?


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