But Major Moves is about concrete, not people. Gov. Mitch Daniels' privatization of the welfare application process will impact some of Indiana's most vulnerable citizens: the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the children.
The deal announced Wednesday will find Indiana paying an IBM-led corporate team $1.16 billion over 10 years to upgrade and operate the application process for food stamps, Medicaid, and welfare, all work now done by state caseworkers in each county.
As envisioned, applicants will be able, and encouraged, to apply for benefits by computer, mail, fax or phone, instead of visiting a caseworker in person. We say encouraged because it would seem to be to the private vendor's profit advantage to have more applicants doing it electronically.
Yet it is the complexity of people, of each person seeking public assistance, of his unique and changing circumstances, that makes us wary of putting the nuances of each in the hands of a computer program. Can compassion be downloaded?
And yes, we know: The final version of the plan gives applicants the option of going face to face with a real person. But only experience will tell us how many choose to do that and how many others are led to take the electronic route.
The fact that the provision for some in-person meetings was included in the final version suggests the governor did listen to advocates for the poor who are especially concerned about people getting lost in the impersonal complexity of cyberspace.
Daniels did not come to Wednesday's announcement unprepared. He said that it would save Indiana $355 million over 10 years and that all state Family and Social Services Administration employees would either stay with the state or go to work for the IBM team.
And it must be a profitable venture for the consortium of companies, given the goodies that were thrown in by IBM. The corporation promised 1,000 new jobs in Indiana at an IBM service center. The location has yet to be named. The company would donate computer hardware and software to the "Big Red" computer at Indiana University, and would establish a Future Technology Solution Design Center at IU.
Each of these would be positive for Indiana, from either an economic or an education perspective. But from the perspective of government, isn't it troubling that the government our taxes support is deemed incapable of performing these services or of correcting a flawed system itself?
And it is troubling, as well, as state Rep. Dennis Avery, D-Evansville, says, that this plan has unfolded in the executive branch without consultation with elected legislative representatives on contract negotiations. Even though Daniels is committed to going forward with the contract, that may still become an issue when he has to go to the Legislature for budget approval over the 10 years of the contract.
In the end, the gamble is that Hoosiers who need assistance will be better served by this new system than by the old, that they will not be lost in its complexity. For the sake of those people, it is a gamble that they, and the governor, cannot afford to lose.
