Quantum Art's™ work with local governments always provides for interesting contradictions. I was reminded today of a county IT director that was tasked by the CIO to produce a 25-year technology spending and implementation plan. As hilarious as this may sound, there is some reason to it: the same IT director told Quantum Art that he needs to budget hardware purchases a year in advance (i.e. if he wants a Pentium 4, he can only get it next June). Council budget approvals require government IT directors to plan much further ahead then their corporate counterparts. Given such experiences, they should be better at budgeting IT spending. What is interesting to consider is whether such constraints would also make them better at predicting technology evolution.