{"id":32874,"date":"2010-05-19T11:22:49","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T10:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/blog\/?p=32874"},"modified":"2010-05-17T11:23:32","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T10:23:32","slug":"government-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/government-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Perils and Perks: Government Online"},"content":{"rendered":"


<\/p>\n

\"Hyperspiral\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Two completely opposite experiences with \u201cgov tech\u201d led to this post.\u00a0 The first was a catastrophe so vivid that it illustrates every mistake an entity could make in public.\u00a0 And the second was a nice surprise.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the story of how an online system set up by an American state crashed and burned in less than a minute\u2014in the process, outraging hundreds of thousands of citizens.\u00a0 Seriously.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a quote from the most recent excuse letter sent out by the errant agency:\u00a0 \u201cThe program experienced more than 38 million Web hits, and nearly 39,000 rebate reservations were made both through the Web site as well as the phone system. \u201c<\/p>\n

Do the math!!\u00a0 Even assuming that half the reservations were made by 18,000 people who spent up to four hours<\/em> to get through on the phone (1,000 calls a minute, says the letter), and assuming that every web visitor tried 20 times to hit the site . . . that would mean 900,000 people were trying to get through on the website to make one of 18,000 available reservations.\u00a0 So two-tenths of one percent of the web applicants were successful.\u00a0 (Even if everyone tried 100<\/em> times\u2014well, you see the gist of it.)<\/p>\n

So why is this worthy of a post?\u00a0 I\u2019ll content myself with proposing three takeaways:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Realistic<\/em> planning is vital to all online endeavors.<\/strong> In this case the problem was humongous numbers, but that shouldn\u2019t have been a big surprise.\u00a0 In fact, it turned out later that the program had been outsourced to a company that encountered exactly the same problems in other states.\u00a0 So\u2014how did these people (on both sides of the contract) end up so completely bumfuzzled? <\/li>\n
  2. <\/strong>When something goes radically wrong, don\u2019t make excuses. <\/strong>Do not talk about the problem in the abstract:\u00a0 \u201cX happened because Y.\u201d\u00a0 Go straight to \u201cWe failed and we are abjectly apologetic.\u201d\u00a0 How is it that no one ever learns this lesson?<\/li>\n
  3. Do not tweet hysterically in a crisis. <\/strong>As the web mob became increasingly frustrated, they tried getting news from the program\u2019s Twitterstream.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what the tweeter(s) were saying:\u00a0 \u201cWe are experiencing unprecedented demand.\u00a0 Please keep trying.\u201d Which adds . . . <\/li>\n

    Insult to injury.\u00a0 In the first place, \u201ctrying\u201d was irrelevant\u2014the site wasn\u2019t responding at all.\u00a0 (No one can figure out, by the way, how any<\/em> online people could have gotten reservations.)\u00a0 And in the second place, encouraging people to keep hitting the site only made matters worse<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    If you are wondering why there was no queueing system, join the club.<\/p>\n

    Meanwhile, for what it\u2019s worth\u2014just boil those three points down to Prevent, Repent,<\/strong> and Think Before You Tweet<\/strong>, and you can apply them to just about any situation, large or small.<\/p>\n

    Now for the nice surprise.\u00a0 I heard somewhere that the Health and Human Services (HHS) department of the U.S. government wanted to leverage \u201cthe wisdom of crowds.\u201d\u00a0 (In case you\u2019ve forgotten already, that\u2019s the notion\u2014popularized by James Surowiecki\u2019s 2004 book<\/a>–that aggregating the opinions of many will often produce better decisions than following the careful thought of a few.)\u00a0 Intrigued, I visited their website to see how this desire would be implemented.<\/p>\n

    It isn\u2019t, actually.\u00a0 The site is mainly about how to use blogs and social media.\u00a0 But the reward for visiting is a very nice set of \u201cguidelines\u201d<\/a> for the business use of social media tools.\u00a0 Free for the taking, so stop by!<\/p>\n


    <\/p>\n

    (Yes\u2014that is<\/em> a hyperbolic spiral<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Two completely opposite experiences with \u201cgov tech\u201d led to this post.\u00a0 The first was a catastrophe so vivid that it illustrates every mistake an entity could make in public.\u00a0 And the second was a nice surprise. 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