El Paso County CTO Peter Cooper said collaboration, new ideas and better ways of doing things is the best way to accomplish what needs to be done with less dollars. Cooper said in the Conference of Urban Counties, 37 counties formed an IT director's group and the Board said to look at software as a consolidated effort. The counties were contemplating spending millions on justice systems. They came up with an RFP for a next-generation justice system, went through a year-long process, in which 175 county people watched the demonstrations and evaluated the final product. "There were IT people, district attorneys, sheriffs, jail staff, court staff, justices of the peace, clerks, and other county staff members," he said. "That's unheard of in Texas or elsewhere."
Cooper said he was giving the association of cities and other groups a hard time, because they aren't doing something similar. "Every little jurisdiction is going through the process alone without collaboration," he said. "They can do it if counties can do it."
Jones said that schools decided to opt out of any statewide system to preserve local control. "They sued the state on exactly that point," he said. "The school finance system doesn't give sufficient ability to make local decisions."
Pete Anderson, Fort Worth CIO, said collaboration is crucial. In the private sector, he said, when money goes away you see mergers in which processes have to change. "The big difference is that government rarely has mergers." He said if efficiency is the goal, the public sector should look at that idea.
Larry Olson, Texas CTO, said the state has just finished a major effort to complete the state's strategic plan. "We took this seriously, looked at every word. It is on the Web site. It has accountability, he said, and identified nine objectives, with two to three strategies to deliver on each objective. It also identified DIR's commitments to them.
"There is a window of opportunity, said Olson. "We are talking to cities and counties. This is the time that we try and take advantage of it. Shame on us if we don't try and do it."
Rick Webb --former North Carolina CIO now with Accenture -- said to the participants, "You have incredible opportunities, that don't come that often in government," to move into the enterprise world and get it right. "The entire country is looking at what is happening in Texas and in Virginia."
Anderson described an ERP project in Arlington that is going live Monday, as an indication of the kind of things that can happen.
Cooper said that in New Mexico he was on a statewide committee for a voter registration system. The Legislature said they wanted it, but the counties said no. Cooper and the secretary of state decided to make it voluntary. They got people buying in and using their expertise. The Legislature threw in some seed money, and people scrambled to get on the system. Cooper said that in Texas even the state CTO can't tell a county what to do. "There are seven or eight counties that will buy off the contract here this fiscal year." He said. "Make it voluntary, throw some seed money in and they'll go for it. That's how you build up trust."
