The Problems with Obama's Innovation Strategy

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5. Couple this paralysis to act with the requirement that detailed requests for proposal (RFP) must be written for any outside third-party company working for a fee above the low six figures and you have a recipe for innovation constipation. Writing an RFP assumes an agency knows what needs to be done. Given the current chaos on Capitol Hill, do we reasonably believe what to do in most agencies is actually known and agreed?

6. Let's also acknowledge the policy and legislative components inherent in the Obama innovation strategy. Congressional approval and oversight will almost certainly be required for most of what is called for. Given the difficulties Republicans and Democrats are having presently in agreeing on any controversial issue, I have little hope that most of what is contained in the plan will be acted upon before quite some time, leaving a disappointed citizenry and a country that is still woefully unprepared for the challenges of the 21st century.

Innovation in government is going to require policy innovation just as well as any other component in the mix.

A Support Structure Must Come First

While these structural issues are clear impediments to innovation, there are some activities that I am very excited about. I believe that newly appointed CTO Aneesh Chopra and his team at the Office of Science & Technology Policy are onto something big with the Government 2.0 initiative. With the goal of opening up government data to drive transparency, efficiency, and responsiveness, a torrent of new applications are being created that run using Web 2.0 technologies. In comparison to some of the big problems contained in the Obama innovation strategy, these applications are comparatively simple to create, yet they provide huge returns through the creation of new business models, enlighten decision-makers who had limited visibility into the problems they are tasked to solve, and allow people to participate in government as they never have before.

But my instincts tell me we have a different journey to go on before realizing anything close to the plan outlined in this strategy. My suggestion would be to rescind the ambitious spending and take a step back to answer the following questions: How do we build the right structure to support innovation in our federal government? How do we thoughtfully create the right set of strategic programs to produce the desired outcomes? And how can we inspire the legislature to work together without the turmoil we are seeing today? Realizing real innovation gains will require that government achieve a level of alignment that does not exist today. Until that is achieved, America is destined to underachieve with respect to its innovation potential.

Jeneanne Rae is the co-founder and president of Peer Insight, a consulting firm focused on services innovation and customer-experience design for S&P 500 firms. She has worked in the field of innovation and design for over seventeen years, consulting and educating dozens of leading companies in a multitude of industries. In 2005, BusinessWeek named Rae one of its "Leaders of the Year." .

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