Some recent examples are notable here in Queensland with Brisbane City Council (BCC) taking some action to cut current costs and Queensland Government taking action to try and cut future costs (i.e. lower risk).
BCC recently shut down the very popular http://www.ourbrisbane.com.au/ site. A site that I and many others visited, providing a terrific community service for the city. Between 700,000 and 1M people visited this site monthly! It cost BCC $1M a year to maintain. Yet the only choice they could see was to shut it down, stating that they will migrate its required functions to the main council website.
For anyone involved in internet marketing and community building, a site that attracts 700k-1M people monthly is creating enormous value for many people and no doubt has even higher value creation potential.
Yet the short term easy solution was to destroy that value. As a rate payer I would have wanted a better result.
At the same time, BCC seems to be changing its policy to the way it manages its projects, reducing short-term costs and accepting higher risk in the hope that these risks won't create more costs later. BCC's project delivery has been very good in recent years so perhaps they feel they can afford this risk. Go back 10 years and it may have been a different story. Whether the current cost management priorities are being set with full recall on corporate memory, well perhaps time will tell.
An alternative view is the Queensland Government's recent appointment of a whole of government CIO (Chief Information Officer) reporting directly to the Minister for ICT and "responsible for ICT project management, policy development and implementation, and workforce across Government". On the back of some recent ICT Management disasters, this government has some very fresh and raw experiences which is driving a more risk averse position that can reduce the potential of future costs, even at some short-term cost.
Short-term thinking versus long-term is a major consideration for all business people. One of the most notable examples was when Branson bought back ownership of Virgin Records because he couldn't operate his business having to explain and be driven by quarterly profit drivers.
How well our government decision makers are operating in this respect only time will tell.
Article on closure of Ourbrisbane.com.au
Opinions on the closure
Press release on Qld Gov CIO role
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