This week Bill Gates noted that we need better modeling tools for software in order to solve some of the persistent and hardest problems facing the planet. I agree, but I would suggest to him that we not only need better tools. We also need better concepts and techniques for modeling. Som research on modeling human-machine systems by my friend Andrew has indicated that modeling techniques still lack meaningful representation in complex systems [1]. I have reviewed a number of papers this year analyzing Gantt charts and their capacity to improve project management. In each case, Gantt charts tend to get used as eye candy with no impact on improving project outcomes. The idea is to have a representation a group can use to jointly visualize complex data and understand it [2], but these current representations are still inadequate. So, simply making software that add digitizations of current concepts will not be enough. We need new concepts.

Over the past two years I have found myself increasingly involved in the movement to use technology to increase organizational agility. This movement had relied on manufacturing technology speed and precision improvements for the past two hundred years with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Recently, this is all changing as cheap access to high-speed internet and communications technologies are enabling true interaction and work product creation in distributed teams. A few weeks ago I participated in a small summit meeting at the Mountain Quest Institute (MQI) in Frost, West Virginia. MQI is a neat place, certainly restful and supportive of deep thinking.

In the healthcare space, we are beginning to see huge investments in health information technology from the US Federal government influence the direction of development. Meanwhile, integrated clinical information systems at hospitals in the 1980s found huge challenges integrating data and providing a managerial value to the health providers. Indeed, they were deisgned to help the administrators with their analytics and quarterly reports to CMS or other regulartory bodies.

State-wide Automated Social Welfare IS (SACWIS)

I have been following various government efforts to organize and improve. Family services prove particularly difficult. The SACWIS effort is one in a long string of failures by the US government, including the Compliance Monitoring System (1971) and the HDS Information Systems Strategy (1979). Jay Silerman lead the SACWIS effort- $2B federal project under HHS to get states up and running. Money was up and out to the field in 1994.  All states expected to be up and running by 1996.  As of 2005, no state was up and running fully on this system.  At best, states were in the opeartional stage.  By 2009, many are now operational.  See status: click here