Communicating with government & public stakeholders 1 Craig A. Stewart Executive Director, Pervasive Technology Institute; Associate Dean, Research Technologies.

1

Communicating with government & public stakeholders

Craig A. Stewart

Executive Director, Pervasive Technology Institute; Associate Dean, Research Technologies

19 July [email protected]

Presented at FLEET** Working Group Meeting, 19 July, Vienna, AustriaAvailable from: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/13404

**http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=PROJ_ICT&ACTION=D&CAT=PROJ&RCN=99182

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

2

3

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

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

4

Image by Jinfonet Software, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:3_Dashboards.JPG, Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

5

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

7

ABCosts Organization Products

Wages and Benefits

Training

PeopleHardware and Software (Expense or Depriciation)

QualityMaintenance and Other MeasuresContracts

Processes SERVICEExpendable Supplies

Unit Costs

Circuit Charges

Data Knowledge Video Voice

Organization Sustaining Activities

Other Costs

8

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

9

Surveys – important source of data – IU example

Survey done with IRB approval so results are publishable – Facts build trust

10

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.

For undergraduate and graduate students: How helpful has the information technology

environment been in your learning experience at IU?

11

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

UITS Services Report on Cost and Quality of Services

12

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

One useful guidebook:

Tash, W.R. 2006. Evaluating research centers and institutes for success! WT&Associates Fredericksburg VA. ISBN 1-59971-769-7. Available for purchase at Amazon

13

15

Ready, Set Robots! Camp @ PTI 2010

Mike Boyles, AVL, Research Technologies, UITS / PTI giving demo

From 3D movie What is Cancer? by Albert WilliamIUPUI, SOIC, AVL, Research Technologies, UITS / PTI

© Matthew King, student in IU professorMargaret Dolinsky's Digital Art class

From 3D movie by Albert WilliamIUPUI, 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

20

21

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

22

IU Example: 21st Century FundIUSM 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

23

$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

IU example: Return on Investment

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

$0

$20

$40

$60

$80

$100

$120

Fund

ing

in M

illio

ns o

f Dol

lars

$0

$20

$40

$60

$80

$100

$120

Fund

ing

in M

illio

ns o

f Dol

lars

Average NSF funding: $30,354,000

Average NSF funding: $7,781,000

95 of Top NSF-funded Universities with HPC 98 of Top NSF-funded Universities w/out HPC

With HPC Without 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#2010scihigh 26

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

27

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-position-papers

• 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.

33

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/)