When I talk to city and local government technology leaders about their challenges and lessons learned, I’m often surprised they don’t openly and regularly share their experiences with the civic technology community or, in general, the citizens they serve.
Reasons include time or political constraints or that they don’t have an outlet to do so. There’s either no official platform for them to blog or they lack the resources to create one. While there are some chief technology officers and chief information officers who occasionally write for established government IT publications, there is an unfortunate lost opportunity in the lack of regularity here.
Federal agency CIOs have an official site (CIO.gov) dedicated to this. Locally, there are a handful, such as Seattle CTO Bill Schrier, who keeps a personal blog focused mostly on government technology issues.
There are a number of local IT leaders doing fantastic work that should be openly presented and discussed from a first-hand perspective. If more did this, it would not only help validate their work, potentially help increase their political clout, but also encourage others to follow suit or, even better, have a point of reference for launching similar initiatives.
Whether it’s on GovFresh, your personal blog or official government website, set a regular schedule, create a content strategy and take the initiative to share your experiences. Your colleagues and the citizens you serve will appreciate the effort, and I can assure you your influence and leadership within the government IT community will grow exponentially and immediately.
If you’re a city or municipal government IT executive interested in sharing your ideas, questions, projects or lessons learned on GovFresh, please feel free to email me at luke@govfresh.com.