By Larry J. Singer
There appears to be a new focus on strategic management of information technolog y resources in state governments around the country today. Many states - like Ca lifornia, Arizona, Washington, Pennsylvania and others - are searching for new c hief information officers to take on this role. These and other states are engag ed in a serious review of their current information technology management struct ures. Texas and Massachusetts are realigning their IT management organizations t o promote more integrated management of their technology projects. While I would like to believe that these moves reflect a recognition of the strategic role of information technology in government, I don't think that's the whole story.
I believe that this new focus reflects the fact that political leadership is dis tressed by the historically unreliable estimates of performance, cost and schedu le of recent information technology projects. One common response for these poli tical strategists is to require technology managers to produce increasingly deta iled information plans as a way to reduce risk. Another common response is to br ing in new leadership, usually from the private sector, to run these planning ef forts. While I believe in effective strategic information planning, I think that these responses are based on a basic misunderstanding of the nature of informat ion technology projects in general and in government specifically. I feel strong ly that new CIO's who have private sector successes under their belts will find the public sector to be a radically different environment. Planning approaches t hat worked in their old companies will not work as well in their new jobs.
Almost all of the literature on strategic planning insists that there needs to b e a tight integration of information technology plans with organizational busine ss plans. All of the leading strategic planning consultants advising business ho ld this view. It doesn't take a genius to understand the logic behind this most basic of concepts, and in the private sector to disagree would be foolish. But w hen a strategic information technology planner works in the public sector, espec ially state government, they have to face the harsh reality that there is almost never a published business plan to reference. In fact the political reality of our democratic form of government provides for an environment where legislative changes are constant and the senior executives' policy objectives change as freq uently as newspaper headlines.
Our new political leadership is asserting that the strategies of their predecess ors were way off the mark. While the debate over policy strategy rages on, the n ew information technology leadership will be expected to devise better plans for delivering projects this year and next. How will they develop information resou rce management plans in this volatile and uncertain environment? They will likel y focus on tactics rather than strategy.
THE DISCOVERY PROCESS
Another reality that all private- and public-sector technology managers face is that implementing new technology is a discovery process. The very nature of tech nology projects involves uncertainty in end product performance. Managing the in terrelationship among a large number of variables is the essence of good project management. Technology projects often require an iterative approach to developm ent - a style that deals with failures by trying and then trying again. Private firms that are successful in their adoption of new technologies recognize the un certainty embedded in these projects and provide their CIOs with the flexibility they need to innovate.
Government bureaucracy, on the other hand, provides an environment that has over ly stringent rules and procedures in both budgeting and procurement that - while effective in a stable environment - make it much harder to react in the face of rapid technological and process change. This lack of flexibility will confound managers when they try to apply approaches that worked in technologically innova tive private sector companies.
While information technology projects require extremely competent managers, thos e managers need to understand the realities of operating in a public sector envi ronment to be effective. For effective strategic planning to take place in gover nment, IT management cannot expect the luxury of reacting to clear business stra tegies that are laid out for them. To be effective these CIOs will have to be cl early integrated into the strategy formulation and implementation process. They will have to make their new bosses - governors, cabinet officers and legislators - understand that resources committed to technology projects must be considered strategic in nature, and may require long time-frames and utilize large portion s of agency's available resources if they are expected to deliver significant re sults.
Governors and other political leaders may lack technical sophistication and find the details of technology and technology projects to be obscure. This lack of s ophistication will make it difficult for the new IT leaders to communicate the r ealities of multi-million dollar development and deployment projects. They will have to avoid resorting to oversimplification of the issues if they expect to pl ay the essential public policy role of government leaders. A key role of technol ogy leadership is to emphasize the potential future value of new development eff orts, the performance improvements in service levels. But an equally key role wi ll be to avoid understating underlying disciplines and processes required for ne w technology projects. It is important that we not leave political leadership un aware of the difficulties inherent in these projects. If we allow them to remain naive, they will be surprised and non-supportive when their support is needed m ost - when more money or time is required to finish the project than was anticip ated.
The bottom line message is: don't expect new leadership from the private sector to be a magic bullet that cures all that ails IT in the public sector. Managemen t of this public environment is hard work and the pay is not equivalent to the s ame jobs in the private sector, making it hard to recruit the very best from tha t world. We need good management that also understands the government environmen t if we want to use computing strategically in the public sector.
Larry Singer - an industry expert on strategic computing - is a senior executive fellow in public policy development and management.
