RALEIGH – The ancient Greek adage goes, “The only constant in life is change”. New technologies are discovered. Businesses rise and fall. Trends in fashion, dining, music and arts flow in many different directions. But some areas of our society, by necessity, remain fairly constant.
Most local government services must operate at full capacity 24/7/365. It is not acceptable for our emergency 911 services to suddenly be offline. Or for the fire department to take a day off. We painfully feel any interruption in transportation services, in utilities or public health. The simple need of our government to provide stable, high quality and persistent services leads to a “don’t fix what isn’t broken” mentality. Government by nature, is risk averse. In other words, don’t change.
But it is important to modernize services and bring new technologies and approaches into government. Read more about how the Cities of Raleigh and Cary are taking a novel approach to striking the balance of maintaining steady services, while also experimenting and taking risks on WRAL TechWire.