Outsourcing big is not always beautiful. Indeed, sometimes outsourcing big can be a blunder. For example, on Friday, Information Age reported a tally of the UK government’s project management track record, and found that IT projects count among its worst failures. Why? “Government needs to stop thinking that when it comes to procuring IT systems, big is always beautiful,” says shadow chancellor George Osborne. “We need to move in the direction of what are known as ‘open standards’ – in effect, creating a common language for government IT,” he said, which would mean “big projects can be split into smaller elements, which can be delivered by different suppliers and then bolted together”.

Even in Texas, big isn’t always beautiful. Texas was an early advocate of large scale outsourcing of government work, with lawmakers in 2005 ordering agencies to Read more …

For Abraham Lincoln, it was the telegraph. For John F. Kennedy it was the television. For Barak Obama, it is Web 2.0.

Each of these politicians proved adept at adapting new technologies to communicate. Lincoln took to the telegraph and used it for rapid communication. No doubt the advantages of the telegraph were on Lincoln’s mind when we composed the short and compact Gettysburg address. Unlike keynote speaker, Edward Everett’s 13,600-word, two-hour oration, Lincoln’s ten sentence and 272-word address fit neatly on the front pages of newspapers across Europe.

In the famous Richard Nixon-Kennedy television debates, the youthful Kennedy performed well on television. Nixon, ill at the time, looked ill on television. Kennedy knew television favored him and took advantage of it. Those who watched the debates felt Kennedy was the winner.

By putting into service blogs, YouTube, constant email Read more …