Takai also came prepared with a set of topics she hoped to discuss. So the ensuing conversation ranged from how technology in state agencies serving children and families could support No Child Left Behind initiatives to employee morale in the IT department to how to undertake the renewal of an agency's tired legacy system. As Takai was leaving, Granholm wanted to know how soon they could get together again. "I had teed up more subject matter than could be covered in an hour," Takai says. "We had left some open issues." Takai, however, made sure to stress to the governor which topics were informational and which Granholm needed to act on quickly.
The public-sector job that Takai has taken on, after three decades in the business world, is a complex balancing act that includes advancing the governor's goals, educating and cajoling the legislature, providing services to departments and leveraging IT across agencies, and pushing for new technology applications that state government has not implemented before.
"CIOs that are now Cabinet level are no longer in the situation of being the provider of the computer utility in the back room," Takai says. "They are elevated to sitting at the table and coming forward on matters of policy. They're being seen more and more as a political asset, able to position our elected officials as being forward- thinking. It's an opportunity IT professionals had not had before."
In short, the CIO's role has matured. No longer is it mainly about building systems. Rather, it's about building relationships: with governors, with legislators, with agencies, with end users, with vendors. These are times of transition for CIOs and not just because of the large turnover in administrations and major budget constraints. "You feel these winds," says Carolyn Purcell, the CIO of Texas for the past nine years. "I was ruminating about that recently. It's just different than it used to be."
Indeed, the CIO's focus has shifted from developing and deploying advanced technologies for the first time to refining the use of technology, buying it wisely and using it well. It's about having technology align with agencies' business processes and further government policies. And it's about bringing together departments to share and integrate technology, rather than having each agency reinvent or duplicate IT projects. "For years we've been the darling of the boardroom in some respects," Purcell notes. "It was 'Gotta have it, can't get enough.' All of a sudden we're post-pubescent. We're adults. The requirements are much stiffer for us to succeed."
Before technology became widespread in governments, "we got away with saying, 'Trust me, your life is going to be better,' and in many cases it was," Purcell adds. But with tight budgets and disillusionment from the dot-com bust, there is a greater burden on technology officials to demonstrate the efficacy of the work they do and provide a stronger rationale for why and how to spend money. In such an atmosphere, relationships and trust are paramount.
AT THE TABLE
In the early years, when the CIO position was first being created, much of the job revolved around kicking the mainframe when it was down and setting up new desktop PCs for employees. When the alarm over the impending Y2K crisis sounded, many CIOs gained press and prominence with their efforts to fix a huge computer glitch and modernize patched-up legacy systems. And they had relatively flush economic times in which to do it.Now, however, CIOs find themselves in a budget crunch--with no imminent deadlines driving the agenda--and have to justify new technologies when budgeters are looking to cut funds all around. It doesn't help that some major IT failures along the way have made elected officials wary of big projects and promises that technology can only make things better.
In such a climate, it's become imperative for CIOs to sit in with governors and executive-branch staff to market the merits of IT. "We're there to provide guidance and advice on how policies can be implemented," says Missouri CIO Gerry Wethington, who is also president of the National Association of State CIOs.
CIOs offer advice on how to use IT as a core business function. They spend more and more time talking about issues and budgets. They make frequent visits to the statehouse. "These are all testament to the fact that this is not a technology position," Wethington says. "It's about policy and the effective use of information technology." CIOs are looking to be part of the management team, thinking strategically and helping government to be more responsive to citizens. They are no longer pushing for the "shiny objects," as Wethington likes to say. Once governors understand the value of various technologies, he believes, they're generally favorable toward their role and reliance on them.
If CIOs are not sitting at the table with their governor and other Cabinet members, Wethington notes, then there's a problem and a weakness in the position. In his view, CIOs have two choices: They can wait until they're asked to come to the table or they can go to the table themselves. Either way, they have to get immersed in the policy discussions and strategize about IT's function in carrying out the executive's programs and plans.
The recent turnover in governors has made that a difficult proposition in some states, says John Kost, a former CIO of Michigan who is now vice president and research director with Gartner, a technology research firm. When it comes to the new crop of executives, he believes, there's been something of a downgrade as relates to their understanding of the value of technology. "Some are better, more are worse," Kost notes. "The calls we're getting are 'How do we cut our IT budget?' not 'How do we use IT better?'"
Such attitudes mean that the job of CIO requires strong interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate in terms governors can grasp. The CIO's job is to build the business case and raise enthusiasm among new Cabinet members and program leaders. "Sometimes, when a new administration takes office, it is so consumed by Medicaid, or the budget shortfall, they haven't focused on the technology end," says Aldona Valicenti, Kentucky's CIO. "Our responsibility is to bring it to their attention."
On the other hand, a new administration is often paying attention to things that will cost it poll points or that will erode public confidence. So CIOs have to find an appropriate time to bring the message. "If something is breaking, give it to them right away," Valicenti says. "Otherwise you can wait."
LIGHT-SWITCH MENTALITY
The governor's office is not the only stop on the CIO's rounds. It's equally important to get legislators to understand the merits of technology so they don't pull the rug out from under important projects by withholding or eliminating funding. For Tom Jarrett, Delaware's CIO, getting Governor Ruth Ann Minner on his side was a snap. In fact, it was under her executive order that the CIO position was created to fix an ineffective technology operation. So Jarrett spends most of his time with the legislature when it's in session.Some of what he does is lobbying. A lot has to do with finding out if legislators need any assistance from the technology department on issues they're dealing with. And some of it is "watch-dogging" to ensure that the legislature doesn't write laws that unintentionally bog down the technology department's activities. "The legislature is fond of putting a lot of different things in," says Jarrett. "No one in the past was looking at the impact from the system perspective. Maybe they put in a change in voter registration but never once considered that someone in my organization might have to spend the next six months making sure the program fits."
Jarrett's people review every piece of legislation and discuss the consequences with legislators, who often view technology with a "light-switch mentality"--that it's as simple as turning something on. But it's not, of course. New policies and programs have to be meshed into existing systems. Jarrett also puts out information monthly to legislators on what the technology department is doing. He makes sure it includes no techno-babble. "It's coloring-book simple," he says.
Once, when he tried to get more money for security equipment, he got glazed looks and comments that it didn't seem necessary. So he started publishing monthly numbers on the security risks the state faces. Legislators didn't realize that the state was being bombarded with 400,000 spam e-mails and 40,000 viruses a month. In March alone, there were 7,000 "inbound attempts of suspicious origin"--executable files embedded in other things, trying to plant themselves on the network.
Jarrett spends a lot of time educating people about things they don't have much of an interest in. "But," he says, "it's our job to make them understand what our job is and why it's important to them." The more they understand, the more likely it is that they will give him what he needs.
And he tries to foster a mindset that by withholding money for important projects, legislators are not hurting him or his department. Rather, they're hurting their constituents. "They say, 'You don't need a million for that upgrade,'" he says. "Okay, but in six months, when access times go from 30 seconds to two minutes... Well, I don't mean to be flip, but I don't wait in line, it's the people at the DMV that do."
GOING TO THE AGENCIES
Establishing a solid working relationship with agency leaders is also vital. CIOs constantly need to reinforce the idea of thinking across agency boundaries instead of creating separate systems agency by agency. Every time an agency purchases technology without a view toward what other agencies are doing, or what standards are in place, silo walls are buttressed and technology efforts are likely duplicated, at extra cost to the state. Many states have safeguards in place to prevent this behavior, but it still goes on.One of the first things Michigan's Takai did when she started her job was to meet with all department heads and start building those relationships. She didn't invite them to her office. She went out and visited them. "By virtue of going to their offices, I'm able to demonstrate to them that I care." Then, hopefully, those relationships carry through as she explains the need for integration and information sharing across boundaries.
At a recent gathering of the National Association of State CIOs, there was a lot of talk among attendees about whether it's helpful to have business people from agencies sit in on meetings of technology steering committees. During a meeting in Texas, Purcell recalls, someone on the steering committee agreed it would be a great idea to talk to agency people. " 'Then we can tell them how good this technology is going to be,'" she was told.
But such an approach misses the point. "We have to ask them what they want," Purcell says. "They're the ones doing the business of the state." Sometimes, the technology people see technology as an end in itself. "They're enamored with the technical elegance of the solution," she notes.
The relationship between CIOs and agency heads is important, says Wethington, because department heads are not always at the table and CIOs can be their source for the big picture. CIOs have to rally them around the issues, whether enterprise architecture or security.
Positive interplay between CIOs and department chiefs also is crucial because the structure of the technology business in government continues to evolve. The pendulum keeps swinging between a centralized and a decentralized model for IT management. Lately, some current and former CIOs have been advocating a middle-ground approach.
With a decentralized model, where agencies handle all their own IT functions, there tends to be duplication and greater expense. Alisoun Moore, Montgomery County, Maryland's CIO who previously held that job at the state level, says it costs a whole lot more to build 22 wide- area networks for 22 agencies, for example, when you could get away with one. And there's no concentration of brainpower that way. "You have split your expertise up around the state," she says. That means it's difficult to handle large projects like child welfare. She also has noticed an entropy factor in government. "Left to its own devices, government will always decentralize."
On the other hand, many states are looking at centralizing IT operations to get rid of myriad systems and hardware that don't share data. But agencies often feel a loss of control under such a model. They typically chafe and guard turf.
For example, there was a backlash against the centralization model in Philadelphia, says Dianah Neff, the city's CIO. Although she had a charter to centralize IT across the organization, she encountered a lot of resistance in her early years. "It's wonderful to have a charter," she says. "It's another thing to know if the organization is ready to go from totally siloed to centralized. It makes a whole lot of sense on paper but not if the organization isn't ready to take that dynamic step."
As a result, the idea of a "federated" model is gaining popularity. In that case, an overarching CIO centralizes what makes sense, such as e-mail systems and other "utility" services, but agencies are left to take care of their own business applications. Where there is a monetary value from consolidating, it's logical to centralize. But if health services has an application only it uses, for example, it makes sense to leave it in the agency, says Kentucky's Valicenti, who is a great believer in the model.
The federated model is a major topic of discussion among CIOs examining their roles in government. "Lots of states are retro- organizing," says Steve Kolodney, former CIO of Washington State, now with the technology firm AMS. He believes that the future will have to include new models for leadership across jurisdictions. CIOs must learn to be more strategic about governance, about the politics of putting IT in place, about demonstrating technologies. "What's the next plan? "What skills does it take? " he asks. "We're done with the experimental part."
