TECHNOLOGICAL SIDE EFFECTS

We’re big fans of progress. In fact, many years ago, we were the first people in our circle to have home computers. (They were IBMs with big floppy disks and no hard drives and we absolutely loved them).

That said, we’ve become increasingly aware of instances in which current technologies, designed to create efficiency, can have deficits over the previous ways of doing things in state and local government.

Take, for example, the telephone. A number of surveys have shown that younger people fear direct voice-to-voice contact, preferring to use texts or e-mails. We’ll accept the idea that for simple exchanges of information, texts can be a speedy and an efficient way to go. But, when we’ve exchanged five or six texts with people in state or local government, all the while, asking for a quick phone call, it’s clear that hasn’t been an efficient way to move forward.

What’s more, when people are trying to communicate – really communicate – with one another, old-fashioned telephones are often a better way to exchange ideas than volleying thoughts back and forth without necessarily achieving any kind of consensus.

Frequently, of course, people working together have many of their conversations online through Zoom or some other platform. This gets around some of the problems we’ve just outlined, but it has issues of its own. For example, online video communications require the ability to actually show up on time, and that can be very difficult for state and local officials who are often unexpectedly called into meetings or involved in meetings that run overtime. So, one busy person winds up staring at an image of themselves on their screen, while the individual with whom they’re trying to interact is held up someplace else.

When a phone call comes in late, it’s much easier to work on other tasks while waiting. But awaiting people to show up on your screen doesn’t provide the same flexibility.

We’d be missing out on perhaps the biggest two-edged piece of technology if we left out AI. While we feel obliged to keep up with the ways in which artificial intelligence can help us improve our work (though we never let it write anything for us), it’s abundantly clear that AI is also creating inefficiencies.

For one thing, many prompts to AI come up with inaccurate information that, despite warnings, give the authoritative appearance of being correct. Sometimes these misleading bits of guidance are small, but even an incorrect date or faulty identification of an organization or source can lead to a wild goose chase.

Of more concern, are bigger factual mistakes. We know that many public sector researchers are using AI in order to put together position papers and documents upon which their bosses can make decisions.

But this can easily result in a variation on an old phrase: If the information that AI has picked up was wrong (and there’s plenty of that), it’s a case of garbage in-garbage-out on steroids.

Ultimately, this may be a relatively short-term problem, and as the technology improves the information provided by AI will doubtless be more accurate. But that’s in the future, and the mistakes made now, are going to live with us today.

Another hazard on the road to the future are institutions that crave the ability to keep track on employee productivity through the use of devices that log the number of keystrokes on a computer or use GPS to monitor the motions of municipal vehicles. In a day when there are still many state and local workers doing their jobs remotely, we understand the craving for the kind of oversight this technology offers. But we have to believe that the inherent lack of trust in employees' integrity that these devices evidence can't possibly make staffers feel totally respected to do their jobs properly.

We'd' argue that there have been many better ways to keep track of employee productivity, notably measurements of the outcomes of their work. If people are held accountable for accomplishing their goals, they can emerge with better self-esteem, knowing that Big Brother isn't watching over them.

One more concern: A variety of new technologies are capable of accomplishing valuable goals, but wind up overloading state and local governments with so much data that they may wind up operating on chronic overload.

For example, while police body-worn cameras can help hold officers accountable – and that’s a good thing – they create unfathomable amounts of video and imaging data, which can leave government employees with hours of raw footage that need to be manually reviewed and redacted in order to protect personal information from being utilized publicly. The benefits may outweigh the costs here, but the costs are real and can’t be ignored. This may be another case in which the availability of technology has jumped ahead of our ability to efficiently use it. Our hope is that AI comes to the rescue here, too.

Turning back to where we started, we’re fans of technology and recognize that it can be the solution to many of the issues with which states and localities must deal. We can’t help being reminded of the ubiquitous television commercials for wonder-drugs that may help people deal with all manner of illnesses but boast a litany of side effects that have to be taken into account.

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