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Executive Leadership Institute

"Everything is a priority" a bad recipe for public-sector IT effectiveness, says Gartner research director

Tina Nunno who keynoted GTC's Executive Leadership Institute (ELI), is a research director in Gartner Executive Programs. She is responsible for conducting research and developing publications aimed at helping CIOs and their organizations around the world improve their performance and contribution. She discussed the results of a Gartner CIO survey, in which public-sector CIOs named as their number one priority security breaches and disruptions, improving business process management and data protection and privacy in that order. She said this year's survey's surprise was the emergence of business process improvement from "off the radar" to number two. In past surveys, cost cutting had been consistently the number one priority.

However, of the top 10 priorities named by public sector CIOs, said Nunno, there were only six percentage points difference between them. "That means all of them are priorities, everything seems equally important." That's a bad recipe for effectiveness, she said, since only if resources are unlimited can "everything" be mission critical, which is definitely not the case after years of cost cutting.

Round Two
First round issues for government, said Nunno have mostly been handled. IT is recognized formally, has made a positive contribution in e-government, and has enabled better information and transactions. Next round issues include such question as: How should agency executives evolve their thinking to take greater advantage of IT? What are the right role, reporting relationship and responsibilities within agencies, and how do both change to create results and value?

Many public-sector agencies conceive of their role as enabling government, but according to Nunno, a contribution role in delivering required outcomes is a better game plan. "Success is measured in terms of impact on the business," said Nunno, and business improvements are focused on realizing a change to new capabilities. This is "a different discussion with different metrics."

For example, said Nunno, a newly hired Canadian CIO looked at the IT portfolio and discovered 95 percent was maintenance and utility costs. The five percent remaining left little room for change. The CIO began transitioning the portfolio by driving down maintenance costs, outsourcing some functions, then killed some old projects, and funneled the money saved back into new projects. As the portfolio reached a 50-50 split, the ability to change increased, while budget numbers stayed the same. The CIO built credibility, and then was in a position to ask for new money to continue the necessary changes.

One thing that government people are reluctant to do is communicate about successes, she said. They are fearful of appearing self-serving and so often fail to gain the credibility they deserve in what is a very competitive environment for funding. Sometimes, said Nunno, the CIO will talk about outcomes -- "we installed x amount of servers" -- rather than the tangible results those servers made possible.
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.