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From Governing’s
Main introduction pageFebruary 2002 issue
THE GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Introduction: 40-County Average Grade: C+
Welcome to the world of county information technology. Putting Hennepin’s headaches aside for the moment, there’s little doubt that most of the nation’s largest counties respect the value of technology and are taking steps to implement solid, useful systems. A growing number, for example, are working to share common data among service providers. Many are moving towards e-government, using the Internet in a variety of useful ways.
But the very nature of county administration can make efficient use of technology a hideously difficult task. As one official in North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County sums it up: “Inter-jurisdictional coordination and cooperation is a major challenge. Many government services and work processes transcend jurisdictional boundaries. Despite the willingness of the parties, it is often difficult to align the focus, priorities and capabilities of the agencies.”
In Milwaukee County, for example, a regional effort to coordinate police, prosecutor, court and sentencing information in a criminal justice information system started about 10 years ago. But while some of the smaller police agencies in the county’s 19 jurisdictions use the system, the city of Milwaukee — which dominates the county — doesn’t. “I think they believed they could do it better themselves,” says Mary Reddin, assistant manager of the county’s Information Management Services Division.
Sometimes the barriers aren’t between governments, but between agencies in the same government. In Palm Beach County, Florida, the property appraiser, tax collector, clerk of the court, state attorney, sheriff, public defender and supervisor of elections all have their own autonomous IT staffs. A countywide mailing requires patching numerous different lists together.
Every county understands these problems; most are trying to solve them. Many have created steering committees and appointed chief information officers in recent years. Last year, for example, David Martinez became the first CIO in King County, Washington, charged with fostering cooperation among county departments that had been running autonomous systems and projects. A technology management board, comprised of all the departmental IT managers, provides guidance on countywide priorities. The responsibility for IT budgeting now rests with Martinez, who admits this year’s process was, at times, “pretty tense and very difficult.”
As King County has discovered, appointing a CIO doesn’t mean that all technology problems disappear. Many CIOs simply don’t have a lot of power behind them, and spend a great deal of time trying to convince hard-headed department chiefs that there’s a better way to do things. Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, for example, has been trying to centralize its IT decision making, but acknowledges the process is in “early infancy.” The CIO and his staff use “the art of persuasion to get department managers on board,” one official reports, “but all the obstacles haven’t been worked out yet.”
Even a relatively powerful CIO faces a whole variety of challenges, including separate funding streams and dictates from disparate funders about what technology should look like. The federal government has had a long tradition (alleviated some in recent years) of demanding that local governments purchase very specific technology to comply with grants — regardless of whether that technology fits a county’s overall IT architecture. Then there are confidentiality stipulations (or in the words of one CIO, “paranoia about who can find out what”).
Most counties, acutely conscious of the shortage of cash available for investment, do a relatively good job of making sure new projects are well justified. But few do much to make sure that the benefits promised are actually delivered. “It’s been hard to justify the time to do it,” says Hennepin County CIO Robert Hanson. But he says his department is making progress. In a recent experiment in telecommuting, for example, economic-assistance workers were supplied with the technology to work at home. The promise was that by doing so, they would have time to increase their caseloads by 15 percent. Subsequently, a budget department audit verified that this had actually happened. “The IT people play a role, but it’s really an executive business thrust to make sure that people know they’ll be held accountable,” says Hanson. “We’re making sure that every time there is a promise, the enterprise realizes that benefit.”
Training, too, is a problematic area for many counties. Finding money to offer it is the most common difficulty. But even some counties that have sufficient money run into other frustrations. “I know cases where we left training money on the table, which is really painful,” says Steve Chapin, the CIO of Nevada’s Clark County, “because we just couldn’t free people up to get trained.”
But even as counties grapple with these problems, there are bright spots on their collective horizon. The turnover problems are easing. More counties are learning the value of setting aside dedicated funds for technology investment. And outsourcing has been effective in quite a few places. San Diego, Maricopa, Riverside, Orange and Dallas counties have all hired outside firms to take over portions of their IT operations, while retaining internal management control.
Not all the outsourcing has worked. Westchester County, New York, for example, spent years entrenched in political and legal battles over a misguided $85 million software contract. And although Dallas County has been pleased with the results of its outsourcing experiment, it also has learned some lessons. Dallas started by signing a seven-year contract with a three-year renewal clause; now it prefers to have shorter deals with a series of one-year extensions. The key here — as with most IT efforts — is control. Outsourcing any service or operation and then forgetting about it is the worst mistake any government can make. As one Dallas County budget official says, “It’s nice to think that you can buy information technology and let it run itself, but that has never worked.”
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ennepin County came up with an innovative way to help its overburdened social workers spend more time with needy clients. The county gave each of the workers a Palm Pilot for instant, paper-free record-keeping.