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A Unique Enterprise Software Product Roadmap Process?

Enterprise software customers know all about the mystery of the product roadmap. The anticipation of learning whether your vendor will provide needed new features or something interesting. The suspense in enhanced thanks to the secretive process of creating the roadmap, followed by the big reveal at the annual vendor conference. That’s the conference where you … Continued

How Controversial is Happiness as Public Policy?

As we prepare for the FreeBalance International Steering Committee (FISC) conference in Miami next week, I am reminded that not everyone believes that governments should use happiness and well-being as policy objectives. We will be exploring how public policy and budgeting priorities can adapt to national happiness at FISC. Much of the criticism of “gross … Continued

What are the Public Policy Lessons from the World Happiness Report?

The World Happiness Report was first published in 2012. Two additional reports and an update have been published since. These documents include updated rankings and academic articles. There is significant evidence that the metrics used in the World Happiness Report are statistically relevant, and therefore could be used to inform public policy. Happiness as a … Continued

Can Governments Improve Citizen Happiness for Free?

The best things in life might be free, but citizens want something from taxes paid. Governments can use measures of well-being and happiness to focus spending on what is most important for citizens [link to article]. Smart public finances can lead to improved service delivery, when combined with other factors, to result in improved citizen … Continued

How can Happiness better Prioritize Government Objectives?

The notion that citizen well-being and happiness can be part of government policy, as described in my  blog entry last week, may sound indulgent. Like many ideas about improving government performance, there is some controversy about this kindler gentler approach to public policy. What is the Criticism about Well-Being as Government Policy? Critics claim that … Continued

Why doesn’t Public Finance Improvements always improve Citizen Service Delivery?

Smart PFM can improve many aspects of government efficiency and effectiveness. Many observers consider PFM as having cross-cutting impacts.

Is National Wellbeing a Valid Policy Objective?

The notion of linking government policy with citizen happiness and wellbeing is controversial. There remains some concern about the lack of precision in the measurement. The “methods of defining and quantifying happiness differ among researchers, and have yet to become as objective as those used for income or GDP (Bales, 2016)” Government policy affects citizens … Continued

Why Should Government Policy include Happiness?

“Happiness is gaining attention as a metric for policy analysis, (Bales, 2016)” in many governments. The European Union promotes the “beyond GDP” concept for public policy, “complementing their official measures of economic output with measures of well-being drawn from the happiness literature. (De Vos, 2012)” This is not a novel idea. The concept of happiness … Continued

Will Technology Prevent Smart Cities from Improving Citizen Well-Being?

My previous blog entry, Do Smart Cities Improve Citizen Well-Being? explored the holistic public policy implications of smart cities. My conclusion was that “policy makers have the opportunity to upturn the model of smart city technology acquisition from technology to well-being. It is true that monitoring well-being is challenging, as it is with any measurement … Continued

Do Smart Cities improve Citizen Well-Being?

What is the Smart Cities hype gap? Observers have come to question whether smart cities enhance citizen quality of life. Some have gone so far as to question the wisdom of the smart cities concept. “Major cities claim to be “smart”, seminars and conferences pop up everywhere and the “smart” -label is attached to all … Continued

2017: The Year that Government Leaps beyond ERP?

The continued investment in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technology in government is shocking given the high failure rate. For example, the use of ERP in the Government of Canada “Phoenix Pay System,” using Oracle PeopleSoft, continues to generate payroll problems. And, the use of Oracle and SAP ERP by the United States Department of Defense … Continued

Future of Government Integrated Financial Management Information Systems

The future of IFMIS, or Government Resource Planning (GRP),  was addressed  at the  Inter-American Development Bank workshop, The Cutting Edge on Information Technology on Public Financial Management in December. Presenters, like myself, were given 7 questions to answer. There wasn’t much time to get into details, so here’s an expanded answer. Although the workshop was … Continued

Just When you Thought it was Safe to Implement ERP in Government

The agenda for the Inter-American Development Bank workshop this coming Monday, The Cutting Edge on Information Technology on Public Financial Management, summarizes the perception of government software choices for Integrated Financial Management Information Systems (IFMIS) in the region: “there are several alternatives to modernize an IFMIS, for example a tailor-made system (in-house development or using … Continued

Smart Government Human Resources Transparency Vision Case

Freebalance Vision Case Public Financial Management (PFM) plays a significant role in smart government. FreeBalance is developing numerous “vision cases” to describe the intersection of PFM and “smart”. The planning and implementation of smart cities is enabled through PFM techniques and the use of open government.Civil service management cannot become ‘smart HR’ without citizen centric technology. … Continued