“It’s true that the government needs to be innovative, but before agencies can adopt the newest and shiniest technologies, it needs to master the execution of simple, everyday capabilities that citizens need.”
“The Veterans Affairs Department and its U.S. Digital Service team released a new and improved Va.gov in November, a consolidation between Vets.gov and Va.gov with a design more in tune to veterans’ purposes for visiting the site.”
“The department had been working toward these online capabilities and attention to human-centered design for years. But according to Charles Worthington, VA chief technology officer, there’s a difference between innovation and execution, and both are needed to solve some of the country’s biggest challenges…”
“In government, often times… the concept of innovation gets conflated with execution, and I think we really need both in government, and do both,” Worthington said at the Dec. 5 FedHealthIT100 event in Washington, D.C.”
“For Worthington, innovation means inventing something that did not exist before, like fundamental research in medical sciences that yields new discoveries. “Building a web application and hosting it in the cloud is not innovation,” he added.
“That is solved, and the fact that the government does not routinely build web applications correctly is not because we lack innovation. It’s because we lack ability to execute using standard industry best practices.”
“And at times, it’s in the process of execution that the inspiration for innovation is found, and according to Dr. Neil Evans, chief officer for Connected Care at the Veterans Health Administration, this happens often in the clinical arena.”
“In a panel with Worthington, Evans explained…” Read the full article here.
Source: Government Must Execute and Innovate to Solve Healthcare Challenges – By Amanda Ziadeh, December 7, 2018. GovernmentCIO.
