Move the Information to the People

I just finished reading about the Department of Rail & Public Transportation's launch of a “Super NoVa” study to focus on the future of transportation in Northern Virginia.

I am profoundly disappointed. Our leaders and visionaries continue to focus on moving people, cars, trains, buses, and roads around to get knowledge workers to the information they need to do their jobs. These people are missing the obvious... and doing a profound disservice to Northern Virginia. The focus should be on leveraging technology to move the information around.

This isn't a transportation problem... it's an information problem.

Knowledge is a relatively fluid commodity. It may be accessed anywhere and everywhere. It may be accessed via broadband, fiber, wifi, or several other technologies and stored ubiquitously in a "cloud." It really doesn't matter if you are in Manassas, VA; Golden, CO; a beach in the Bahamas; or a mountain in the Himalayas. It doesn't require that you "live" somewhere; a knowledge worker may work from a back deck watching the sunrise, at a Starbucks over a Latte, or from anywhere in America in a Volkswagen Camper (I really regret selling my Volkswagen Camper... it's the perfect mobile office). 

The "problem" is that our supposed visionaries are locked in an industrial age model. 

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 

We have the wrong people working on this problem. The simple fact this project is being lead by the Department of Rail & Public Transportation frames and limits solutions. These folks only know how to move people around. We need some folks pondering our future who know how to move information around. We need to add some technologists to the transportation planning mix. It appears those who would cover Northern Virginia with asphalt know how to do little else. Their frame of reference is management by observation and the eight hour day. They are happy to pave over what little is left of our planet, risk the lives of our knowledge workers by putting them on the road a couple of hours every day, pollute our air, contaminate our water, and destroy our quality of life to continue to focus on moving people around instead of moving knowledge around.

It's time to think differently. Its time to take knowledge out of cubes and offices and let it flow to where the labor exists to perform the task.

The title "Super NoVa" is a great name for a project to redefine work and how it is performed. It is a disservice to Northern Virginia to use such a great title on such an antiquated model. It's "lipstick on a pig".

The President signed the Telework Enhancement Act in December of last year. That act gave all Federal Agencies six months to roll out implementation plans. Virginia offers tax incentives to encourage businesses to implement telework. Our transportation planners continue to ignore these mandates and look for ways to pave our planet.

Yes, we need roads, buses, rail, and other transportation solutions. We also need to integrate telework into our transportation strategy as more than a "footnote" to appease folks like me. It should be the focus, not an afterthought.

Our focus should be using technology to take people off the roads versus using machinery to pave more roads. We need transportation planners who understand this simple value proposition: It's easier to move information to the folks who need it than to move people to the information.