The state had been without a CIO for a year, with interim directors overseeing technology. Expenses were outpacing a biennial budget; IT jobs weren’t being filled fast enough; and agencies were grousing about sub-par service delivery. A review of 62 services found that a handful were due to be retired, but among those were some of the IT department’s biggest revenue generators.
To put the house in order, Jim Weaver said, the department needs to shift its funding structure. “We have to change the financial model so that rather than being a fee-for-service, revenue-generating entity, we can be a cost-allocation entity,” he said. It’s a long-term goal but an important one. Cleaner funding lines could help him to better align services with customer needs.
In the short term, Weaver is working to win back the trust of agencies. To that end, he convened an advisory group within the state’s CIO forum, in order to generate greater buy-in among key stakeholders. “We want to let the community vote, to represent the themes and concerns of interest to the CIO community,” he said. “We are trying to build a collaborative partnership. If we can have candid, transparent conversations, that will do wonders in re-establishing trust. But it starts with us demonstrating that we are listening and trying to do the right thing.”
Weaver also is forming an IT governance group to create a common vision among the agency business leaders. “Business drives IT,” he said. “We exist because agencies need to do business, so we need guidance from the business side.”
Finally, he’s aiming to create a group to help shape IT architecture, to look at big-picture issues around the organization of technology resources. “When you build a house, you have a blueprint. That’s what the architecture piece is all about,” he said.
This story is part of a series profiling new state and local government CIOs.
