This article is written by Craig Kelley, a City Councilor for more than 14 years in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This article was selected by the NYU GovLab as a winner in Apolitical's 2020 American Public Servant Writing Competition.

There are many milestones in American history which most American citizens know well.

July 4, 1776 — Independence Day. April 9, 1865 — the end of the Civil War. 18 August 18, 1920 — ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote.  December 7, 1941 — the day America entered World War II. And December 30, 2019 — the day the world learned that Sharon Stone, an American actress best known for her sultry role in Basic Instinct, had been booted off the popular dating app Bumble.

At first blush, and many of us remember blushing during Sharon Stone’s famous leg-crossing scene, the connection between the actress and other watershed moments in American history might seem dubious.

After all, how could a 61-year-old woman’s love life, however titillating, rise to the national significance of our original Patriots, abolitionists, suffragettes and the heroes of the Greatest Generation? But the connection is a strong one. Though it may sound trite, Sharon Stone’s Bumble experience is the exclamation point that marks a foundational change in the world as we have known it for aeons.

This change is not as immediately evident as when, on July 9, 1868, America adopted the 14th Amendment and extended the right of citizenship to former slaves, but it is, nonetheless, very significant.  When people like Sharon Stone take their love lives to the internet, it is a clear indication that Americans have moved their entire lives online. We bank online. We plan vacations online. We get our sports and entertainment, and our politics, online. We submit our school papers and our work products online. And we, even film icon Sharon Stone, date online.

Bringing government back to the future

Our problem, and it is a very serious problem, is that while the huddled masses of the governed have moved their lives online, uploading baby pictures and constructing spreadsheets of favorite recipes that they share through Google Drive, government in general, has not followed suit.

Somehow, when it comes to the internet —in fact when it comes to many things digital — those in government seem to think it is still 1987. In my 14 years as a City Councilor in Cambridge, MA, I watched as City officials, including Councilors, struggled to understand how to use basic digital tools like email, Excel and document sharing programs. Sometimes I was one of the people struggling.

Certainly, it is unreasonable to compare government functions to the efficiency of an Amazon delivery or a Waze trip map, but it’s not unreasonable to expect municipal employees to be able to manage an email thread, build a spreadsheet or to set up task reminders to increase efficiency and help ensure issues do not get overlooked

The problem of ensuring adequate digital skillsets in government, including digital hygiene and cybersecurity, runs deeper than simple office management and workflow issues. Repeated emails to senior City staff routinely vanish into the ether. There are few formal policies for using communication tools like Twitter or Facebook to engage citizens in a back-and-forth discussion even though a majority of adults participate in one or more social media platforms.

And, as the disruptive effects of the coronavirus are currently proving, there is a critical but unmet need for interactive government meetings to be efficiently held in a virtual world.

The Cambridge Police Department, boasting sniper teams, bomb teams and hostage negotiators, has a scant handful of officers trained to respond to, much less prevent, cybercrime. Employee participation in on-line cybersafety training is dismally low. Upskill training of employees to gain digital skills can be a long and often fruitless grind.

Governing online

Compounding the digital challenge is the market reality that cyber hotshots and top data scientists tend to concentrate in sexy and lucrative jobs at startups, and tech giants like Facebook and Google.

Local governments struggle to get workers with the skills needed to write code, manage software contracts and wade through frequently obsolete and cumbersome procurement regulations that govern the acquisition of digital tools. In the fast-evolving world of cyber, government’s institutional lack of nimbleness can be crippling.

The list of challenges is almost endless.

But these challenges cannot keep government, at any level, from moving into the digital age and they do not excuse governments from meeting that responsibility safely.

Let’s go online and govern

People are living online, businesses function online and wars are fought online.  Citizens increasingly clamour for more and more immediate, transparent and digital access to City Hall. They don’t want, and increasingly won’t accept, excuses for ignored emails, outdated government webpages or the inability to conduct simple civic tasks from the comfort of their computer.

In the private sector, failing to meet a customer’s digital needs might have serious repercussions, including employees being fired or the company going out of business. But too often, City Hall seems to think public expectations of digital competence and communication are irrelevant.

Certainly, it is unreasonable to compare government functions to the efficiency of an Amazon delivery or a Waze trip map, but it’s not unreasonable to expect municipal employees to be able to manage an email thread, build a spreadsheet or to set up task reminders to increase efficiency and help ensure issues do not get overlooked.

The plunge into digital governance, while necessary, cannot be done lightly

City governments, transit systems, political operations and even the personal cell phone owned by the world’s richest man have been hacked, often with terrible impacts.

Municipal employees must be held accountable for keeping digital systems, and the information in those systems, safe from everything from hackers to acts of nature. Governments, Cambridge included, need to double down on their cyber efforts, create purchasing rules that allow greater flexibility to adapt to emerging cyber trends and threats, renew bargaining unit contracts with a view towards improving digital governance and create the expectation among municipal employees that appropriate computer-related competency is crucial to all jobs.

It won’t be easy or cheap, but it must be done. So let’s all go and make Sharon Stone proud. Let’s go online and govern. And as with dating online, remember to keep it safe! — Craig Kelley

(Picture credit: Unsplash)