Utah Consolidation to Become Law

Assuming now that Governor Huntsman will sign HB109, Utah will join other states with a consolidated IT department reporting to the Chief Information Officer. The bill passed on Monday. The transition officially begins on May 2, 2005 and lasts for a period of 16 months. We have already begun to plan, that will go into high gear once the selection of a CIO is completed. Some things must begin immediately:

• Assessment of IT personnel and skills throughout the state.
• Selection of an enterprise asset management systems to track all assets coming into the new department.
• Selection of a portfolio management system to manage all projects initiated and supported by the new department.
• Identification of all services that will be provided by the new department and a rate model and service delivery model.
• Formalization of enterprise architectural model and standards.
• Identification of all critical data stores and locations.

Some of these are already spelled out in the bill, others are not, but may be just as important. A comprehensive consolidation plan will be developed. In an earlier post, I shared a del.icio.us feed where we are sharing information from other states' consolidation efforts. We are now in the process of comparing all existing ITS rates with other states and private sector entities. Then, an entirely new rate model must be built for the new Department, no small undertaking.

An article in Public CIO recognizes that IT has become an integral part of EVERYTHING that governments do:

"With this shift has come the realization that a government's IT strategy must be tightly woven into the fabric of its business objectives, budget formulation process, service delivery strategy, and political dialog."

We must be careful to ensure that as IT becomes its own separate department, there is an even tighter integration into the business of government.

Reprinted from Deputy Director of Administrative Services for Utah, David Fletcher's blog.