Chief Information Officer
City of Chicago
Center: Please describe what in your career led you to becoming the CIO of the city of Chicago?
O'Brien: I went to get my MBA at North Western in the early 90s where I specialized in management strategy, and after I graduated I went to a management consulting firm and did work in oil and gas, retail, health care, etc. At the same time, the mayor was looking to recruit management consultants into government to bring some business process and strategic experience into the operations of city government. I got connected to him through some pro-bono work I was doing with the Chicago Public Schools -- and that is how I got interested in some projects he was working on and decided to make the switch. Then I moved into a couple of different positions and became the CIO in the year 2000.
Center: Are you collaborating with the public schools?
O'Brien: Chicago Public Schools is a $4.5 billion organization similar in size to the city, and the mayor oversees the schools. So, much of the work we do has implications for them, but also they have their own CIO who oversees the technology group and does a lot of applications specific to what the schools are doing. The CIO of the schools and I do interact regularly and we're involved in each other's projects.
Center: What major enterprise-wide projects do you have under way?
O'Brien: When I first arrived, technology wasn't centralized and mirrored the city's organizational structure with about 42 different departments running fairly independently of each other. What you had with technology was multiples of 42 different applications doing back-office processing and work that doesn't support management decision-making or customer interaction.
The approach we took is to say the city isn't 42 times X number of processes. It's really a handful of processes that are all interconnected -- things like customer service, administrative processes around budget and management; regulatory processes around inspecting and permitting; land management dealing with property and boundaries that change; and public safety.
We tried to look at applications as being much larger and encompassing all of those kinds of processes rather than trying to fit together hundreds of homegrown applications. So, the first thing we did was a CRM/311 project. We were also one of the first governments to implement ERP. We installed Oracle Financials in 2001, which handles all of the city's administrative processing. For all our code enforcing and regulatory processes, we use Hanson for an enterprise-wide solution that deals with tracking of inspections and permitting.
And what has underpinned all of those projects, but has been the most unnoticeable to citizen would be the work we've done in GIS -- and I think our GIS is as strong as anyone else's out there.
We basically modernized our entire application infrastructure by looking at core enterprise-wide processes. Now after five years, we've pretty much hit all of those major processes, and the results have been pretty dramatic for the city.
Center: What is the key lesson you've learned implementing these large-scale processes?
O'Brien: First and foremost, the most important thing is you have to a mandate from the mayor, and it's something that the mayor understands and is interested in. Obviously, Mayor Daly is technology-focused and is interested in improving how government operates. So, that's the first thing -- strong engagement from the mayor. And as the project goes on, his office has to be very engaged in driving it.
Second, equal or co-leadership from the IT side is important. I look at my office's role as being responsible for project management, requirements gathering, and technical and architectural guidance on how technology needs to play out. It's the role of the business side to state requirements and priorities, and bring subject-matter expertise to the table. Whenever there is a project that is not run by the business users and this department, it doesn't really go very well. I think that has been one of the most important things that we've learned.
Center: What is your favorite project you're working on for 2005?
O'Brien: I'm not a technical person, but over time I have become more so. So, the most interesting thing we're working on is a service-oriented architecture for all of our applications. Usually I get fired up about all of the great things we're doing on the Web and the new functionality we're bringing to citizens by way of payments, etc. But to me after we've built what I think is a first-class application infrastructure, our most important move right now is to be able keep it sustainable -- to make it last so that we're not as dependent upon the ebbs and flows the technology landscape, but we're able to have access to enterprise-wide data by being smart about how we built our architecture.
This project vastly improves our ability to connect together all of these different applications. Rather than to buy one citywide application that does everything, we've connected all of our best of breed applications together so we have one enterprise view of the data and citizen-related activities. So, it's really revolutionary in terms of how IT is developed. It will make all of the work that we have done last longer.
Center: What is the most important application that cities need to have or should have?
O'Brien: Public safety -- we have done a lot of work with our CLEAR system, and public safety provides intelligence to law enforcement that helps them distribute officers effectively and move them around day-by-day on a real-time basis. A system that gives us data related to incidence and the ability to predict potential crime areas -- that is a really great application we've built that a lot of other local governments are looking to emulate.
The proof that the system works is that the city of Chicago had a dramatic murder-rate reduction. It hit its lowest levels since 1965 in 2004, which was after Chicago led the nation for murders in the years previous. It's a project that we implemented that makes a significant difference to human life in Chicago.
Aside from public safety, there is no doubt in my mind that local governments need to use some kind of customer service technology. We use a CRM/311 model for our customer service. There is no more important thing for a mayor, but for he or she to know what his or her customers want; why they want it; how quickly his or her government is turning that service around; and to go out to the constituents and say, "I know what your concerns are," and "here are the results from it." Governing at a municipal level is all about having the information about what you citizen's concerns are; what you're doing to fix them; and how you're performing at fixing them.
Center: What quality do you possess that makes you an effective CIO?
O'Brien: Having a business-orientation has been helpful in relating to my peers so they don't look at me as the guy who sits in the corner and programs. I am someone who understands business issues. When I look at my job I think it's about maintaining relationships. It's all about having people trust, believe and know you're not trying to pull something. My job is basically a service provider to the rest of the city and citizens -- and I have to be seen as responsible to them. So, building and maintaining relationships is something I work hard at.
Center: If you could be on a reality TV show, what would it be?
O'Brien: The Amazing Race since it requires a huge amount of ingenuity, creativity, teamwork, and you get to see amazing places. You get challenged every second and even if you lose you've still gone all over the world and seen some really cool stuff.
