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IT and Business Alignment

The foundation for building strong relationships, said McDonald, starts with boring and simple stuff. "Do what you say you are going to do, bring it in on cost, or raise your hand early"

More than 290 government agencies responded to Gartner's most recent annual survey of CIOs, said Mark McDonald, group vice president and head of research for Gartner Executive Programs. "In the last two years," said McDonald "government's priorities and expectations are beginning to change." Now government is focused on improving business processes, and injecting more information and intelligence into services. Government priorities, he said, are now quite similar to the priorities and challenges in the private sector.

Mark McDonald

"Public sector CIOs believe they have made progress in their standing in the organization," said McDonald. IS is taken seriously, and the business relationship is positive. However, only 44 percent of those surveyed feel that IS services meet business expectations -- an "F" grade.

The foundation for building strong relationships, said McDonald, starts with boring and simple stuff. "Do what you say you are going to do, bring it in on cost, or raise your hand early."

If you stand outside the system, said McDonald, you can see lots of activity. Now, the public sector CIO needs to transform that activity into real results, completed projects.

If the CIO begins involvement in a project with requirements, "you've already lost" said McDonald. The critical success factor is aligning IM leadership for value creation. For example, the federal do not call list got millions of telephone numbers registered, which would be the most powerful telemarketing list on the planet. But instead of waiting for requirements to be handed down, the IT department set it up so that if someone executed a Freedom of Information Act search of that list, all they would get from the 40 million who registered over the Internet is MAC addresses.

"IT cannot be an island," said McDonald, "you have to find a way to crawl in a window or knock down the door." Dianah Neff came from Southern California, he said, to become the CIO of Philadelphia. She was an outsider, and had a horrendous time getting any face time with the mayor and other city officials. She realized she would never get it with traditional reporting systems. She realized that information was a powerful asset, and that everyone -- even the president of the United States -- has a boss. She used that information asset to help them with their bosses.

The single biggest obstacle to creating value, said McDonald, is an inability to collaborate, an inability to tell one another what is wanted. "If you want more business involvement, it has to be reflected in governance mechanisms and structures," he said. You have to be able to stand up, say something isn't working, and even be able to stop a project if agency involvement isn't happening. It is a mistake, he said, to plunge ahead and complete a project alone. Doing so, he joked "is like putting the shot in the shell, the shell in the gun and then going for a walk with the vice president."

Focus on results and tangible changes, said McDonald. "What will be tangibly different about the business when it is finished? And the project team should be able to answer the questions: Why are we doing this? What's going to be different when we finish what we are doing? "If they don't know," he said, "they can't deliver it."

Deliver the goods, but raise the issues that must be confronted. Instead of reporting as high up as possible, said McDonald, report to the person who has a lot at stake.

McDonald showed a chart of a revolving cycle of effectiveness that begins with gaining executive attention, use that to increase influence, align with the executive agenda, obtain the needed



resources, deliver results, build trust, get more attention, etc. You build credibility when the executive calls you at home saying e-mail crashed, and you can say what happened and what is being done to fix it. When eBay was launched, said McDonald, the site was up and down up and down. The CIO stood in front of the board and said that in the next 30 days it would continue to go up and down because of the unexpected volume, but that by day 31 the crashes would stop.

"Write down the top 10 projects you have going right now," said McDonald, "and ask your agency to write down the 10 things they think you are doing." The results will show you how aligned you are or are not.

"If we shut off all the lights in this room and turn on a single 100-watt bulb," said McDonald, "it would be very dark in here." But that 100 watts aligned in a laser, would make a formidable weapon. Focus attention, he said, make sure people understand the tangible outcomes. "Create a laser inside your organization and you will get things done."
Wayne E. Hanson served as a writer and editor with e.Republic from 1989 to 2013, having worked for several business units including Government Technology magazine, the Center for Digital Government, Governing, and Digital Communities. Hanson was a juror from 1999 to 2004 with the Stockholm Challenge and Global Junior Challenge competitions in information technology and education.