Wink Hartman: Kansas should really make investments in facts engineering – Impression – The Topeka Funds-Journal

Government has lots of features, agencies and departments with the major purpose of offering assistance to the persons of Kansas.

To ideal provide these providers and function for the men and women of our point out, Kansas’ governing administration should undertake and use organization philosophies of putting the inhabitants initial. Govt is higher than all a assistance business and demands to make successful and good quality company a top priority.

This yr we’ve seen challenges with governing administration provider shipping. The unprecedented number of unemployment statements filed with the Office of Labor due to COVID-19 has revealed this. The significant influx of statements could quickly catch any individual off guard, but the response to addressing this inflow was not quick adequate. As well as, extensive-standing issues in condition governing administration contributed to the concern.

Details technological innovation might not be the most enjoyable subject matter and mainframes — hardware and software for governing administration administration will never mild a fire beneath any person — but it is critically significant for the economical delivery of federal government solutions. Point out federal government has mainframe technological innovation relationship to the 1970s and 1980s. This is not acceptable.

These out-of-date mainframes contributed to the unemployment procedure crashes this yr and triggered numerous Kansas residents to hold out and wait. This was sadly the scenario in other states that have not place inner government infrastructure at the forefront.

We make intelligent investments in our state’s transportation infrastructure, which grows our financial state. We also will need to make equivalent investments in our state government’s information technologies infrastructure in buy to have a govt that can greater serve the general public.

There are other strategies apart from information and facts engineering that can be finished to tackle unexpected influxes in the will need for government service shipping. One more space would be searching at techniques to cross prepare personnel in buy to temporarily redeploy personnel as needed in the function of a sudden surge of need for one spot. Cross instruction and quick techniques to temporarily redeploy staff members can address troubles like the unexpected surge in unemployment requests from before this year.

Concerning extra short term employees to male connect with facilities and a computer system that offers quickly accessibility to on the web services, we could have averted the prolonged waits and other challenges that plagued the sudden surge of unemployment applications previously this calendar year.

Productive management of condition governing administration also requirements to address troubles like the require for a lot more efficiency in point out government. Quite a few many years ago, the Legislature commissioned an efficiency examine that delivered a quantity of suggestions. Some of these recommendations have been adopted quickly by the govt branch when other individuals ended up adopted by using laws. But many have hardly ever been adopted, falling target to a Topeka mentality to avoid improve.

When Wall Road was plagued by the 1960s paperwork crisis that induced a at the time a 7 days shutdown of the marketplaces, they produced a central securities depository to effortlessly transfer ownership, followed by a centralized clearance and settlement method to reinvent and velocity up our securities industry. This is the variety of progressive thinking that ought to be at the heart of state govt.

This is how we do points in the company environment and these are factors we have to have to seem at to make our condition work greater for all Kansans.

Wink Hartman is the CEO of the Hartman Team of Companies in Wichita and was the 2018 Republican nominee for lieutenant governor.