“It’s Just a Small Pilot” Is How We Lose Strategic Autonomy

The Trojan Horse Comes Gift-Wrapped

The Director of Urban Planning was excited. “Sven,” she said, “We don’t need IT’s budget for this. The vendor gave us a free pilot for the traffic analysis AI. It’s just a small test. We can upload the license plate data and see what happens.”

I stood in the doorway, the immovable object. “You want to upload the movement patterns of our Citizens to a black-box server in exchange for a free dashboard?”

“It’s just a pilot,” she insisted. “If we don’t like it, we stop.”

“You won’t stop,” I replied. “In three months, your team will have built their workflows around it. The data will be formatted in their proprietary structure. And when the bill comes for the ‘Enterprise Tier,’ we will pay it, because the cost of leaving will be higher than the cost of staying. No.”

The Dependency: Addiction by Design

In the geopolitical landscape of technology, the “Free Pilot” is the equivalent of a drug dealer’s first sample. It bypasses the immune system of the municipality—Procurement.

Vendors know that if they can get the users hooked on the interface, the IT department loses its leverage. They are banking on Shadow IT becoming Production IT.

Once a department migrates processes into a walled garden, we lose our Strategic Autonomy. We are no longer negotiating a contract; we are paying a ransom to keep the lights on. The vendor controls the roadmap, the pricing, and the data format. We have become a dependency, a satellite state of their ecosystem.

Furthermore, “Free” is a lie. If we are not paying with currency, we are paying with:

1. Citizen Data: Used to train their models.
2. Metadata: Revealing the operational tempo of our government.
3. Lock-in: The erosion of our ability to switch providers.

The Exit Strategy: The Pre-Nuptial Agreement

I have a simple rule for my team: No Entry without an Exit.

Before we authorize even a single user login for a pilot, the “Exit Strategy” must be documented. We do not look at the features; we look at the divorce clause.

We require a proof of extraction. The vendor must demonstrate, technically, how we get our data out.

• Not as a PDF.
• Not as a proprietary backup file.
• But as structured, open data (JSON, CSV, SQL dump).

If the system cannot export our history in a neutral format, it is not a tool; it is a roach motel. You check in, but you do not check out.

We must cultivate the discipline to say “No” to the shiny new toy if it comes with handcuffs. We serve the Citizen, and the Citizen deserves a government that owns its own memory.

FAQs

Does this mean we can't try new tools?

No. It means we don't put live Citizen data into tools we don't have a contract for.

Why is an exit plan needed for a 3-month pilot?

Because temporary solutions have a habit of becoming permanent infrastructure.

What is the cost of 'free' software?

The cost is the data they harvest to train their models. The Citizen pays the price.