Tell the Truth
Telling the truth is a core value of the United States Digital Service. It will also be essential for the new California Office of Digital Innovation.
This March, The Sacramento Bee published a story: “California’s failed tech projects come in late and over budget. Gavin Newsom wants to fix them.” However, one month later the State published a blog post about their technology project success rate, asserting that it is 90% over the past 10 years.
Whose truth are you going to believe?
California is far from alone when it comes to information technology failures. Minnesota’s new DMV computer system is a mess and Oregon’s healthcare exchange project was a complete failure.
Federally, the Government Accountability Office found that legacy IT systems are high risk, increasing in cost, and have outlived their effectiveness. The Census Bureau risked billions of dollars trying to develop their own handheld computers for the 2010 census. The Social Security Administration made multiple failed attempts to improve disability claims processing.
The list goes on and on.
Why do governments have such a terrible track record when it comes to delivering technology projects? Is it a procurement problem? A failure of planning? Are they employing the wrong waterfall or agile methodology? Is it a process problem? A talent problem?
My answer may surprise you: it’s an integrity problem.
The State of California recently published a job description for the new Office of Digital Innovation Director recruitment. “You find the truth and tell the truth” and “will provide candid and informed counsel” are included as core responsibilities.
Having served as a member of the United States Digital Service, this makes me smile. “Find the truth. Tell the truth.” is a core value of USDS and we know how essential this practice is.
Sarah Sullivan, a former USDS colleague, recently spoke about the importance of telling the truth in government and incorporated personal stories from the Obama White House.
Finding the truth requires special dispensations and political air cover. For example, Sarah mentions that the refugee discovery team was specifically asked by The White House to conduct interviews up, down, and sideways throughout the entire refugee program:
“We were specifically asked to look at the program from end to end and we were asked to go up and down and sideways to find out if the government was going to reach the goal. So that up and down part — we could meet with the sub sub sub sub sub sub subcontractor in a basement somewhere (because they are always in a basement) and we can go way up to the Cabinet Secretaries and the White House Chief of Staff and sometimes even the President. And sideways we could go between agencies to the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security and the different intelligence community groups.”
This approach is so effective and necessary that it has been practiced in every USDS engagement.
Telling the truth creates the space necessary to actually solve a problem. It allows decision makers to see what is really happening and decide to make necessary changes. It can unleash teams; empowering them to work with confidence and clarity.
When creating a results-oriented culture, truth-telling is fundamental. I have observed that teams pursuing the truth are more focused on results.
Teams that prioritize project optics over reality usually struggle to produce desired outcomes. State leaders must recalibrate incentives. If consultants and staff are punished for telling the truth, they are not going to tell the truth — putting projects in jeopardy. Instead, truth-tellers must be rewarded. They have to feel safe and be empowered.
In my experience, teams that face facts are more able to trust each other. Low truth environments produce low trust teams. On IT projects, where collaboration and coordinated iteration are paramount, low trust translates to low performance and high conflict communication.
It turns out that telling the truth is not just a moral imperative. Over time, it is more efficient than hiding the truth. Dishonesty creates friction.
I am reminded of times when I’ve seen government employees struggle to tell the whole truth without getting into trouble. They performed verbal somersaults; twisting events to formulate a positive spin on project status, misconduct, or some obvious collective failure.
These prevarications—bubbling up through every level of the organization—materially undermine the State. Projects become unable to react to changing realities and it takes any hope of continuous improvement off the table for California. Unfortunately, more attention is paid to the production of misleading reports than on the delivery of working software.
Eventually the truth does come out, but there are usually severe consequences for kicking the can so far down the road.
Certainly this was true leading up to the botched launch of Healthcare.gov. There were truth-tellers, but powers that be did not want to hear those messages and actively squashed those who gave warning. Meanwhile, President Obama heard nothing but consistent assurances that everything was on track.
A statewide culture change is required if the Newsom administration wants to succeed in this arena.
I believe that the Office of Digital Innovation Director should be accountable for producing an organization that expands team members’ ability to tell the truth in government. ODI must hire courageous staff that will practice constructive truth-telling — even when it is hard — in order to support the spread of this culture to agency partners. Furthermore, government leaders at every level need to hear the truth a little harder.
Avoiding the truth does nothing to improve how the State delivers services to the people of California. We face urgent problems that need to be solved. Fortunately, truth-telling is a proven best practice when it comes to modernizing government.
If you want to advance the State of California then you must make a solemn commitment: Find the truth. Tell the truth.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
— Richard Feynman after the Challenger shuttle accident.
About Ben Damman
Firmly believing that our government programs could become triumphantly effective, Ben Damman shares his personal opinions about the roles that technology, design, and leadership play in such a transformation. An entrepreneur at heart, he has also worked for Apple, Symantec, The White House, and the State of California as software engineer and digital service expert.
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