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Efficiency a Common Theme for Governments Worldwide, Says Oracle's Juan Rada

Government agencies throughout the world are grappling with the same efficiency and information management challenges that have spurred commercial businesses to use IT systems for greater productivity. Juan Rada, Oracle's senior vice president for public sector and education global business units, discusses how the right technologies are helping national and local governments deliver services more efficiently and cope with the widespread staffing shortages predicted for the years ahead.

Q: Federal agencies in the U.S. are being pushed to increase efficiency by running their organizations more efficiently and effectively. Is this a trend you're seeing throughout the world?

Juan Rada: In different countries it's being couched in different terms, but the desire for greater efficiency is certainly a common theme. Public sector agencies are now automating areas of their organizations in ways similar to what we've seen in the private sector. At the same time, public sector managers are re-examining the way they work—their processes, how people collaborate, and how agencies can store data so there's one place where everybody can access and share it according to their authorizations.

Q: Is the desire for efficiency the sole catalyst for these
re-examinations?

Rada: Efficiency is important, but it's not the only challenge. Also important are the accuracy of information and the ability to gather intelligence related to their missions. I was discussing this with someone from a large European institution. The minister had to make a presentation before Parliament, but the staff couldn't give him the statistics he needed because there were so many numbers, no one knew which ones were accurate. This is a common situation that people are coming to grips with it as they realize this points to significant IT infrastructure issues.

Q: What's Oracle's competitive advantage when it comes to public sector efficiency and information management?

Rada: Public sector systems need to be scalable and robust, and we have a significant advantage in delivering ERP applications, middleware, and a database that meets these requirements. Our bank customers have historically faced huge challenges when it comes to scalability, so we have experience in delivering robustness, scalability, and security in our systems.

Q: In the U.S. there is growing concern about the aging public sector workforce and large numbers of people retiring in the next couple of years. Is this is a problem that other countries are facing, and if so how might technology help governments address this challenge?

Rada: This is certainly true for most of the developed countries, which saw an expansion in the public sector during the same period in the '60s and '70s. There are two ways that this impacts technology. First, many of the systems that governments have today are very old, and since the people who know how to run them are retiring, there is a big transition in many countries from legacy systems to a new generation of systems, which in itself will decrease costs and increase efficiencies.

Secondly, technology can help lessen the impact of a shrinking workforce through self-service applications that enable citizens to find answers to their questions or perform some transactions, like paying their taxes, without having to interact with a government worker.