US STEM IN DECLINE: Despite demand, the United States as a whole is experiencing a talent and use case gap. Only 16% of graduating American High School Seniors are sufficiently proficient in mathematics and interested in pursuing a STEM career despite its growth path and importance to our culture. In college, more foreign students pursuing advanced STEM degrees than United States based students. In fact, 2/3 of the Engineers graduating with PhDs are NOT citizens of the United States.
DIMINISHED USA STEM: Its not just the simple preference, it represents a lost of United States Global Economic Competitiveness, pervasive and corrosive to our nation. The World Economic Forum ranks the United States as 52nd in the world quality of mathematics and science education and 5th in overall global business competitiveness, and declining.
CALIFORNIA EDUCATION IS NOT ENOUGH: California Department of Education gets STEM and is leading the the nation in STEM Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in Elementary, Middle School and High School programs.
The problem is not as simple as STEM education offered broadly, early and encouraged in high school, and represented in college, job creation must continue, and government NEEDS to recognize the value of STEM and apply it too. When United States STEM capability is in decline, and more non US based citizens are getting advanced degrees, the jobs of the future, within the USA are more and more going to H1B visa holders, with advanced degrees, willing to work for pennies on a dollar.
All branches of government should look at managing itself like a business from the perspective of recording, resolving, and managing incidents and records. IT Data Management, Strategy, and backup, exists for a reason. The lesson should have been learned from Corporations like Enron, that motivated Sarbanes Oxley for ensuring better governance and reporting. So why should government be any different?
I would assert that the USA, and particularly in California, the home of leading STEM innovation, California Government should also be leading STEM practices like IT Technology best practices for service delivery, data management, and software development life cycle. California and Silicon Valley should lead and be tapped to lead initiative to tighten, improve, and use the technology to solve business problems in government.
Here are several ways I would like to see California, and the USA, LEAD in technology, innovation and advance US STEM Opportunity. Education is a start, jobs creation could and should come from Government Initiatives starting to run with greater transparency, like that of a business. California Government in particular, should be the "reference case" for accountable transparent government by managing true problem and incident management.
SOME PLACES I WOULD LIKE TO SEE CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT LEAD:
- Federal Government become a reference for standard IT Business Controls! Government is measured, managed, and improved by standard business processes and Sarbanes Oxley equivalent controls.
- Accountable/transparent government means robust system and process resolution for never losing records or documentation records.
- Service Delivery, problems and incidents affecting citizens in all branches of services (IRA, VA, CIS) are performance and systems measured, reviewed, reported, and improved.
- Telework Tax Incentives could lower costs of labor, so that US based citizens can compete for jobs anywhere, while reducing transportation and environmental impact. The rest of the world gets it! According to a recent Small Business and HR 2014 report, telecommuters can save $2000 - $7000 per year . This does not mean just government pilots proving you can work from home, it means building systems and incentives that encourage less driving to work, particularly in metropolitan areas, it includes allowing encouraging telework options to communities, or areas where jobs impact is great. Lower cost, environmental benefits, employee benefits, life balance---Global Telecommuting is on the Rise:
- America lags. 20% of the World workforce, as David Hill Wrote, "The US Being Left in the Dust of the Global Telecommuting Revolution". China, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, India and Africa have more telecommuters working from home than America
- 82% of the workforce in India Telecommute at least once a week.
- 26% of the US work from home at least once a week.
- Jobs Creation, Social Media, Task Force Experience Projects: Advanced Government Job Boards and community outreach for economically depressed areas where jobs are limited to provide local brainstorming, solutions and services. Times have changed, particularly in technology, where applying online, particularly if you are out of the workforce for a while, makes it harder to return to the workforce. Economic development, with social outreach could do alot,and government contract agencies could really benefit from the minds of many workers who are between jobs and suffering from impact from these systems.
Fortune Magazine article: "How Bob McDonald can (really) fix the VA’s health care system" has it right!
Veterans Secretary Bob McDonald, a former CEO of Procter & Gamble, must create a new dynamic if the reforms are to succeed; .. he has to go beyond Congresses’ prescriptions and change the agency’s internal dynamics by focusing on what is measured, why it is measured, and what is done in response to the results."
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) should leverage Technology having well working systems and business process experts in place to support the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Of course the IRS should not lose email for any reason, they also should also also be accountable to proactive management and resolution of issues that escalate wasting taxpayer money from lack of sufficient "basic" service delivery metric and management. They also should not have system problems so bad that they can neither fix a systemic problem that impacts the taxpayer, or have a business workaround and escalation to a taxpayer advocate in place to manage it.
The Affordable Care Act sites Healthcare.gov, and Covered California bugs, service issues, calls and resolutions should be tracked, managed, reported and resolved- before they became news. Standard Technology follows a review and approval cycle that tests the resilience and function of both the system being designed, and the organizations that support it. To blame an official for the failure, but never fully fix the website development system problem at the core of why we must pay attention. HIRE an IT Task Force! A business that was allowed to perform in such a manner could, and should, be fired for failing to deliver when the problems were discovered in test and production reviews. Covered California had both site bugs and service delivery bugs, and neither were sufficiently managed, reviewed or corrected, in test or production, so the likelihood is that future changes could disrupt the system or the support. If you dont look at the technology solution, you never fix the problem. .
1 Comments
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