INN OVATIVE STATE
Similarly, alert readers will note the
irony of the disappointing developments,
since the book appeared, in one of Chopra’s best examples, the VA scheduling
system. Many of the improvements he
claims really did take place – but not entirely system-wide. The rollout of the new
healthcare system also provides both
positive and negative evidence about his
proposed approaches. (Much of the difficulty can be traced, he points out, to a
single major procurement done “the old
way,” resulting in a bad technical solution
to one key component.) Substantial analysis remains to be done about how to get
the more entrenched, change-resistant
components of a large organization to go
along with major innovation, or to come up
with different improvements of their own.
Chopra admits that he generated many
more good ideas than he saw through to
completion, leading his wife to call him “the
Secretary of Memos.” One is led to suspect
that individual leadership and persuasiveness play a larger role, and systems concepts a correspondingly lesser role, than
Chopra and analytics professionals would
like to admit. This implies that leadership
style is one of the important subjects of study.
Even more important, how to evaluate what
proposed changes are working and how to
focus on the real causes of problems is an
ongoing challenge that analytics professionals are especially well qualified to address.
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Chopra also points out that the current
news media culture and climate tends to
focus on contentious issues and embarrassing shortcomings, while under-reporting large-scale but relatively slow-moving
system changes. Here, too, analytics professionals could be helpful, by digesting
meaningful information and presenting it to
news outlets in ways they can readily utilize. Chopra’s book and public appearances are an attempt to do this, along with his
active participation in electoral politics. (He
ran, unsuccessfully, for lieutenant governor
of Virginia last year and is currently very active in Senator Mark Warner’s re-election
campaign.) In short, he doesn’t have all the
answers – but he is definitely raising many
of the right questions, and analytics professionals would do well to respond.
Doug Samuelson ([email protected])
is president and chief scientist of InfoLogix, Inc., in
Annandale, Va., and a senior operations research
analyst with Group W, Inc., in Merrifield and
Triangle, Va., supporting the Marine Corps Combat
Development Command (MCCDC). He is a longtime
member of INFORMS and a contributing editor of
OR/MS Today and Analytics.
Notes & REFERENCES
1. Aneesh Chopra, “Innovative State: How New
Technologies Can Transform Government,” New York,
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2014.
2. Brent James and Douglas A. Samuelson, “Change
We Can Live With: Building the Data Capabilities and
Analytics to Make Critical Improvements in Patient
Safety and Wellness,” OR/MS Today, October 2013.
3. James Pinkerton, “What Comes Next: The End of
Big Government – and the New Paradigm Ahead,”
New York: Hyperion, 1995.
4. Douglas A. Samuelson, “Diagnosing the Real
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