Communicating with government & public
stakeholders
Craig A. Stewart
Executive Director, Pervasive Technology Institute;
Associate Dean, Research Technologies
19 July 2011
stewart@iu.edu
Presented at FLEET** Working Group Meeting, 19 July, Vienna, Austria
Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/13404
**http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=PROJ_ICT&ACTION=D&CAT=PROJ&RCN=99182
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Arbeitgeber
• The one who gives the work
• Ultimately the populace – acting via the government
• Reporting to the government and the populace is thus
reporting to your boss – the giver of the work
• If your project does not report well by itself, others will
report for you
– Unfortunate US example
• When planning your project, ensure that you know
how to explain why the outcomes matter, how you will
explain their significance, and how you will explain
progress and achievement of incremental outcomes
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Reporting / Informing
• Report against key goals
– Progress relative to project plan
– Key Progress Indicators (but progress cannot
be the only product)
– Things that went badly that we did not expect
– Things that went well that we did not expect
– Changes in plan as a result
• Report to each constituency
– In ways appropriate to the constituency
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Reporting to the government
•
•
•
•
1 page key summary of progress against goals
Straightforward, simple facts
No obfuscation
What did you find out, what did you change as a
result
– No metric about what the right answer is, but
“nothing” is rarely the right answer
• Use same structure and format each time, to make
it easy to compare and identify progress
• KPI (Key Progress Indicators) – one useful
methodology
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Image by Jinfonet Software, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:3_Dashboards.JPG,
Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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http://dashboard.imamuseum.org/ used with permission. May not be reused without permission
Performance measures for all organizations,
including university IT organizations
• Robert Kaplan and David Norton. The Balanced
Scorecard. HBS Press, Boston, MA, 1996.
• Four dimensions of retrospective and prospective
measures
– Financial perspective: deployment (and growth) of revenue, ABC
against internal (historical) and external benchmarks
– Customer perspective: customer satisfaction measures, number
of partnerships with faculty in teaching and research, support of
university business processes, support of library processes
– Internal perspective: process measures, classic IT measures of
availability, cost-of-poor-quality, speed and depth of development
cycles
– Learning perspective: employee satisfaction, employee
development (MSCE, CCNE, etc.), personal alignment of
employee goals with position
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ABCosts
Organization
Products
Wages and Benefits
Training
People
Hardware and Software
(Expense or Depriciation)
Quality
Measures
Maintenance and Other
Contracts
Processes
SERVICE
Expendable Supplies
Unit Costs
Circuit Charges
Data
Video
Voice
Knowledge
Organization Sustaining Activities
Other Costs
Peebles, C.S., C.A. Stewart, B.D. Voss and S.B. Workman. Measuring quality, cost, and value of IT
services in higher education. In: Proceedings of American Quality Congress. (Charlotte, NC, 2001).
Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/426
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Surveys – important source of data –
IU example
Survey done with IRB approval so results are publishable – Facts build trust
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Some sample comments from IU
surveys
• I have found it difficult and confusing to create my own
web page here at IU. I get bogged down in creating a
new account, trying to tell if I already have an
appropriate account, etc. I have not sought help for this,
mainly due to time constraints, but it does not seem very
intuitive or well explained. I did not appreciate being
harassed to take this survey.
• The telephone contract sounds like a rip-off to me and
the long distance charges are way too high.
• UITS has repeatedly been fantastic in helping me.
• It would be nice if Quarry had more nodes and more
documentation.
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For undergraduate and graduate students: How
helpful has the information technology
environment been in your learning experience
at IU?
45
40
35
30
25
Percent
20
15
10
5
0
Not at All Helpful
Somewhat Helpful
Very Helpful
1997
1998
1999
2000
Year
Peebles, C.S., C.A. Stewart, B.D. Voss and S.B. Workman. Measuring quality, cost, and value of IT
services in higher education. In: Proceedings of American Quality Congress. (Charlotte, NC, 2001).
Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/426
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UITS Services
Report on Cost and Quality of Services
Peebles, C.S., C.A. Stewart, B.D. Voss and S.B. Workman. Measuring quality, cost, and value of IT
services in higher education. In: Proceedings of American Quality Congress. (Charlotte, NC, 2001).
Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/426
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One useful guidebook:
Tash, W.R. 2006. Evaluating research centers and institutes
for success! WT&Associates Fredericksburg VA. ISBN 159971-769-7. Available for purchase at Amazon
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Ready, Set
Robots! Camp
@ PTI 2010
From 3D movie What is Cancer? by Albert William
IUPUI, SOIC, AVL, Research Technologies, UITS / PTI
© Matthew King, student in IU professor
Margaret Dolinsky's Digital Art class
Mike Boyles, AVL, Research Technologies, UITS / PTI giving demo
From 3D movie by Albert William
IUPUI, SOIC, AVL, Research Technologies, UITS / PTI
Day of the open door, long night of research
Return On Investment
• Terribly hard to figure out
• For 100 M euros a year, one ought to be
able to figure it out
• ROI should be stated relative to goals of
FP7 FET Flagship program
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IU example: Benefits of Life Sciences
• High tech, research-driven industries contributed 1/3 of nation’s
economic growth over past decade:
– Biotechnology industry sales nationwide (2004): $33.3 billion
– Indiana ranks 7th nationally in pharmaceutical employment, 7th in
medical devices employment
• Human and economic benefits from reduced morbidity and mortality:
– Economic savings from 1970-1990 due to decreased
cardiovascular mortality was $1.5 Trillion/year. An estimated 1/3
of this - $500 Billion/year - was result of life sciences research
– Indiana’s current ranking in health:
• 47th in cancer deaths
• 46th in prevalence of smoking
• 41st in obesity
• 40th in diabetes
• 38th in heart-related deaths
Congressional Joint Economic Committee, NIH
United Health Foundation, 2003
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003
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IU Example: 21st Century Fund
IUSM Return on Investments
• Seven awards totaling $12,022,754
• IUSM 21st Century Fund recipients:
– Received 97 new research awards totaling
$55,534,544
– Filed 28 invention (IP) disclosures
– Filed 3 patents
– Formed 2 companies
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IU example: Return on Investment
$209 million grants & contracts
+
$42 million IUSM investment
= $251 million
Economic impact:
$634.5 million (Indiana economy)
8,628 jobs
$6.4 million state income tax
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US Dept. of Commerce and IUSM estimates
Data from the Top 500 List
From Amy Apon, Clemson Univ. May not be reused without permission. See: High Performance Computing
Instrumentation and Research Productivity in U.S. Universities, A. Apon, S. Ahalt, V. Dantuluri, C. Gurdgiev, M.
Limayem, L. Ngo, M. Stealey. http://www.jiti.com/v10/n2.html Supported in part by NSF Grant #0946726.
Apon - Simple Example of ROI
• Evidence based on 2006 NSF funding
With HPC
Without HPC
$120
$80
$60
$40
Average NSF
funding:
$30,354,000
$100
Funding in Millions of Dollars
Funding in Millions of Dollars
$100
$120
$80
Average NSF
funding:
$7,781,000
$60
$40
$20
$20
$0
$0
95 of Top NSF-funded Universities with HPC 98 of Top NSF-funded Universities w/out HPC
From Amy Apon, Clemson Univ. Used by permission. May not be reused without
permission. Supported in part by NSF Grant #0722625.
Enlist help!
Enlist the public – whatever your public is
• TeraGrid campus
champions
• Local Support Providers
• IT community (1IUIT)
• VOs
• Apache champion model
Image from TeraGridEOT: Education, Outreach,
and Training 2010.
https://www.teragrid.org/web/news/news#2010s
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cihigh
Communication
• ….with Government is simple if you take the
“just the facts” approach
– Government agencies must reward honesty and
openness
• … with the public is really hard and takes
concerted, directed, purposeful effort
• ROI estimation is hard, but likely essential
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Obtaining information from
professional colleagues and lay
public
Obtaining information - systematic
•
•
•
•
Surveys
Focus groups
Interviews
The above all required professional implementation to be
done well
– In the US at least all of the above require human subjects
research approval to be executed and have the results published
(and the worst of all kind of human subjects research is that
which is done in ways that do not allow publication!)
– One must define carefully what population you want to sample,
and then work very carefully to do so
– Human subjects tends to be difficult to work with – hire
professionals to handle them!
– These mechanisms can be used with professionals and the lay
public
Obtaining information – semi-systematic
• Among professional circles, one can use submission of
position papers (also sometimes called ‘white papers’) as a
way to obtain input. Past experience suggests:
– Short page limits are useful
– Requiring attribution to authors is useful
– For an example of a set of position papers resulting from such a
process see http://pti.iu.edu/campusbridging/software-positionpapers
• Workshops
– Useful, but it’s hard to put together a workshop that has results
not predictable in advance from the list of attendees
– Publishing workshop results thoroughly is essential
– See http://pti.iu.edu/campusbridging/networking for good
example of workshop organization and reporting
Obtaining information - nonsystematic
• “Open listening channels” – e.g. online survey via
Surveymonkey.com. Key issue: results susceptible to campaigns,
and one never really knows what to do with the results other than
summarize them and say “here they are”
• Birds of a feather sessions (professional meetings) and “town hall
meetings” (lay audiences). Both are susceptible to opinion
campaigns. Town hall meetings are particularly susceptible to
political manipulation, and a video taken with a PDA of a presenter
losing their composure and then posted on the web can change
political dynamics overnight. But town hall meetings can also be a
great way to understand how the lay public really feels
• Other social media
– Results can be unpredictable
– If you are going to use other social media as an information exchange
medium, find a ‘digital native’ of the social medium tools you plan to use
and have that person craft the messages with input from the experts.
Don’t let someone over 40 who thinks they understand social media
send tweets.
Summary of obtaining information
• Systematically obtaining information from any
audience is hard and requires engagement of
professional specialists
• Solicitation of position papers can be a very good way
to get a lot of good information and ideas from
professional colleagues
• Open and therefore uncontrolled fora can be
unpredictable and can potentially be taken control of
by people who want to subvert the goals of your
project. They can also be useful as a way to gauge
public opinion. Use with care, assuming that anything
you do in such a forum is subject to being posted as a
video on the web.
Thank you!
• Questions and discussion?
Please cite as: Stewart, C.A. 2011. “Communicating with government & public
stakeholders.” Presentation. Presented at FLEET Working Group Meeting, 19
July, 2011, Vienna, Austria. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/13404
Except where otherwise noted, the contents of this presentation are copyright
2011 by the Trustees of Indiana University. This content is released under the
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
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