I contributed — as a subcontractor to Lundberg Media — to a new report from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services about the use of “Digital Tools for Public Works” (free PDF to download).
The report finds that government agencies are slowly embracing the use of digital tools to empower the firstline workers who provide public services. The applications range from providing tablets to welfare caseworkers in the field, to the ability to pinpoint the location of a tire-crunching pothole with a geotagged smartphone photo.
Government executives and CIOs want to meet the high service expectations of a citizenry that has become accustomed to the speed and convenience of paying bills or ordering pizzas and car rides on mobile apps. But extremely tight government budgets (and silo-ed data) have prevented many agencies from moving as quickly as they might like.
