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GCN Home > 11/22/04 issue

The bottom LINE

By Richard W. Walker, GCN Staff

Successful vetting of technology is tied tightly to business aims

For government agencies today, technology evaluation isn’t the sole province of the IT shop. It is—or should be—part and parcel of an agency’s mission-based management processes. Mary Mitchell, deputy associate administrator for electronic government and technology in the General Services Administration’s Office of Governmentwide Policy, says technology evaluation doesn’t begin on the workbench. Far from it. She says it starts with the question: What problem are you trying to solve? GCN associate editor Richard W. Walker recently interviewed Mitchell by phone.

GCN: What are the first steps for agencies in evaluating technologies?

Mitchell: Before we get to assessing technology and the pros and cons [of a particular technology], we have to start a lot earlier in the process than that. It really starts with a very solid understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve from a business and user perspective. It’s later in the process that you worry what technologies might contribute to solving that problem.

That also means getting solid requirements on what functionality you need, what population you’re trying to serve and how you expect utilization to grow over time.

The reality is, we don’t buy a lot of [hardware and software] independently anymore—we’re really looking for a total solution. But we still have to make sure we have a dialogue [between the government and a potential service provider] in some of the policy areas, because a government solution may differ from a purely commercial solution.

For example, government has a very different perspective on IT security, and one might say that we look at risk slightly differently than the commercial side.

Then there’s accessibility [for the disabled] and privacy. Those tend to be areas that [vendors] responding to our proposals may not get. So there needs to be a dialogue with all the proposers.

GCN: What’s the role of market research in technology evaluation?

Mitchell: It’s our responsibility to do an adequate job of market research before we ever get a solicitation on the street. There are lots of ways to do that.

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