Getting Government out of the IT Business

I read an article today in which the OMB CIO said that the federal government could subsidize a portion of the cost for personal mobile devices and use them for work. He identified $2000 per year. This got me thinking about an old idea that I heard from someone.

Every agency is probably on a 3-year +/- technical refresh plan. So as an agency, we replace about a third of our computers every year. Doing this is an expensive endeavor. We have to spec out the computers, order them, take delivery, image them, issue them to people, make sure that they have property passes, make sure the user knows how to use them. We have to get monitors, mice, keyboards, speakers, all the peripherals. And you know what the crazy thing is, each of these people, myself included, has a better computer at home.

So what if we took Mr. Kundra's idea and applied it to more than just mobile devices? We could figure out the per-employee cost of acquiring and operating his or her computer over a 3-year term. Let's say that it is hypothetically $3,000. Instead of procuring, receiving, deploying and maintaining a computer for the employee to use during that period, what if we gave the employee the money and said, "Go out and get your own computer. " The employee would be responsible for maintaining it and acquiring and installing the software to perform his or her job. The government would not provide people to troubleshoot issues or problems. If the employee has a problem then he or she would have to call Dell or HP, or Apple, wherever the computer came from. The Agency would still operate a network with the network resources and systems, but the employee would be responsible for everything on his or her machine.

My opinion is that this would represent a net gain for the government. We should be able to move pc-support personnel onto other things, and employees would have better equipment that is tailored to their specific needs. It would also help innovation and ensure that applications are able to run on a variety of systems. If you are really hard on your equipment and you want to get a cheap $1000 computer every year, so be it. If you want to get the new Macbook, go for it. These choices are up to the individual employee.

There is still an opportunity to drive an economy of scale too. Instead of taking 3 months to evaluate and negotiate with HP on a device that will already be a generation out of date when it ships, we negotiate a sweetheart deal with the makers that will allow government employees to spend their stipend and get better than market value. Think about it, if we as the largest consumer of computers in the world, suddenly adopted this model then HP and Dell and Apple would want to get the largest possible share of that business. We could leave it to the industry to innovate in a way that would entice people to spend that money on one versus another. For some companies it may be some special service plan with a real live geek-squad type of service that will fix my problems during that 3-year period. Maybe it is some auto-replacement thing. I don't know and can't predict the types of innovations beyond the fact that I am sure there would be many.

I know this is not something ripe for this year or next year, but someday we'll be doing this.