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The Bronner Group LLC provides management and technology consulting
services and technology workforce training to state and local governments.
The 14-year-old Chicago company—which also has offices in
Atlanta and San Juan, Puerto Rico—also reviews and audits
public and private Web sites. Clients include agencies and offices
of the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, the federal government
and the Atlanta Housing Authority. Here are the views of Gila J.
Bronner, 42, the founder, president and chief executive officer:
CHALLENGES: "Trying to introduce net technology to a government
workforce that has historically been 'dis e-enabled.' They've operated
in a largely manual or mainframe environment and [they must be
taught] how to be responsive in an online real time way.
"A very important challenge is for governments to understand
the new technologies that are out there and how government can
take advantage of the technologies not just in terms of citizen
interaction or business interaction with government, but how does
government leverage net technology to operate more efficiently
from a back-room perspective, because the velocity of money and
transactions in government is really between and among governments.
It really isn't between a citizen or a business. Those are very
few transactions—paying your taxes, renewing your license—whereas
every day, governments deliver millions of checks ... and services,
both human services and business services, to a broad range of
constituents."
BRONNER GROUP’S APPROACH: "We recognize [and counsel]
that governments need to plan their e-government strategy. They
need to develop a strategy, a plan, and look at the middleware
issues and how it links back to their legacy mainframe systems.
We've gone in and conducted over a half a dozen studies last year
for various state of Illinois and other government agencies, just
helping them think about how do you plan for utilizing e-government.
What does it really mean. What are the budgetary implications,
the personnel and other service delivery implications."
UNIQUENESS: "It is our nationally recognized domain expertise,
and we are focused. We know that we are here to serve state and
local government. That's all we do."
MILESTONE: "We were awarded a five-year contract to deliver
the computer training for the city of Chicago. We provide all workforce
technology training to the city's 60,000-plus work force. That
was extremely significant. It enabled me, first of all, to build
a full-time workforce. It also enabled us to build the company
and to attract additional professional talent to join us on a full-time
basis."
OPPORTUNITY: "There are over 88,000 units of state and local
government in this country. Ten percent of those are in the state
of Illinois. The sky is the limit [for us in terms of the opportunity
to provide] strategic business advisory services to state and local
government in the net technology arena and [in helping them] leverage
new technologies.
"And frankly, the Web site assurance area, I believe is an
important new arena. The greatest fear for doing business online,
either with business or your government, is data integrity and
security and information integrity. We provide a service in government
... where we certify a Web site, that data integrity is there and
the information security is there."As we begin to roll out
a lot of confidential information and confidential transactions
are processed by governments on a daily basis, it's critical that
citizens have confidence in the [government's] ability to protect
and maintain the integrity of that information."
STATE OF E-GOVERNMENT: "You'd be hard-pressed now to find
a government without a Web site. Most governments are at the informational
stage. With the dot-com push and the Internet focus over the course
of the last few years, governments have felt the pressure to get
applications out, so you do see [such things as] online bill payment.
Now I think as a result of sort of the dot-com implosion of the
last year or so, governments have had the opportunity to really
breathe a sigh of relief and really engage in formal strategic
e-government strategy and planning, and to really think about—not
just roll out—an application."
CRITICAL QUESTIONS: "What are the platform issues, the middleware
issues, the functions, and how do we prioritize rolling them out?
How do we make sure the stakeholder groups we're trying to target
are e-enabled? If we want to let our citizens do business online,
do those citizens have access to a computer, know how to use a
computer? Is there discrimination if we roll out an application
and only certain segments of our population are able to take advantage
of it.
"Government is now wrestling with a lot of those issues [and]
thinking about the best ways to deliver services, about how do
you both Webify various services and functions, deliver them in
a way that economically makes sense for the government and also
provides improved service delivery to all the stakeholder groups."
A LOOK AHEAD: "Soon we're going to be looking at real portals,
where you'll actually be able to register for classes and get your
course schedule for a public school system."At the same time,
if you're an elderly citizen, you'll be able to make that request
for the special bus from the CTA that you need to take you to that
program at the Chicago Park District, and it'll be holistic, seamless,
and as a citizen, you will just think that you are doing business
with one major entity as opposed to seven or eight different government
[agencies]."
ADVICE: "Always strive for excellence."
STRESS RELIEVERS: "Reading fiction and traveling."
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