are jointly at work. Critical attention should be given to whether
public functions are properly allocated by level of government in the
major program areas, whether grant-in-aid are well conceived and
administered, whether there is too much or too little centralization
and whether responsibility for financing services is properly assigned.
In brief, how the three levels of government are meshing as a practical
operational matter.
V
NEW TOOLS AND SKILLS
Still another way — a most exciting way — in which the executive
branch of our State government can be better geared up for the
tasks ahead is by bringing the vast new scientific technology of opera-
tions analysis and systems engineering to bear on the basic problems of
this State. Business organizations have already pioneered the use of
the latest analytical techniques and electronic tools on their more
difficult challenges. Our State government has begun to utilize com-
puter data processing to assist on the voluminous statistical compila-
tions and computations of various State agencies. But we must make
far better progress — and the Legislature must recognize the need for
supporting funds — to bring these new skills and resources to bear
on the really stubborn and sophisticated problems that confront us.
We need to find out, for example, whether the same systems develop-
ment skills that put the astronauts into orbit can be used to cut the
And we should determine, as one authority has expressed it, whether
time automobile drivers must spend fighting their way through traffic,
the "new dimension" thinking that can get moon-probes off the
launching pad can also get able-bodied men off of welfare rolls and
out into the economy.
To suggest the possibilities of this new group of tools and skills,
I want to quote a paragraph from a recent report of a committee of
the U. S. House of Representatives concerned just with the tangle
of present-day transportation problems. Computerization offers un-
precedented opportunities for fresh approaches and new statements
of problems which in the past have been lost in (literally) tons of
detailed paperwork. For the first time using modern data processing
information retrieval, input-output, and other techniques, it may be
possible to break away from the present compartmentalization and
fragmentation of data, and to integrate transportation information
into the broader social-economic framework where it properly be-
66
|
![clear space](../../../images/clear.gif) |