Zero-sum budgets and technology

I was asked to write a guest editorial for i.e. interactive educator, a publication put out by Smart Technology. The theme of the coming Winter issue is budgets (everyone's favorite topic), so I stuck with that subject for my editorial. I revisited some work I had done on library budgets and was struck by the concept of zero-sum once again and how its implications are for technology as well as libraries.

I'm not sure they'll like what I have to say. Here is how it starts:

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Zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). Wikipedia

David Lewis’s pithy article, “Eight Truths for Middle Managers in Lean Times” (Library Journal, Sept. 1991) had a major impact on the way I approach budgeting for technology. His first “Truth” is as applicable now as then: “It is a zero sum game.” About public library budgets, he explains: “There is no more money...The important truth is that those who provide the cash...will not give the library any more. They can’t because they don’t have it.”

Schools, too, seem to have reached a level of funding that is unlikely to substantially increase (if not decrease) given today’s anti-tax climate. School boards and administrators may sincerely want to provide more for technology, but “they don’t have it.”

Does this mean no additional funds for your technology program? Not necessarily. Mr. Lewis suggests a way that middle managers (like technology coordinators) can get more money for their programs: “You can take it away from somebody else. If you believe in what you are doing, you have an obligation to try this.”

Fighting for an adequate budget isn’t much fun. Want to make an enemy? Threaten the funding of a program that is owned by another educator. How many teachers when looking at a lab of shiny new computers think, “Is THIS how the funds to reduce class size were spent?”

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Maybe a good technology director I need to be either more faith-driven or have less conscience. I honestly shudder when I hear of some of the dumb ass ways school funding is spent on technology and try to minimize such expenditures here in our district. (E-rate waste seems particularly egregious.) I am quite sure that makes me a grinch, a fuddy-duddy, and (to tech vendors) a traitor to the cause.

But one of the thoughts that likes to come visit at 3AM now and then is... "What other things could our district buy, with which it is now buying technology?"

A last quote from Mr. Lewis, something to think about when you have a few quiet moments: “It is unacceptable for others in your organization to misuse resources that could be better put to use by you.”

I suppose...