Georgia CIO exiting office

NASCIO Transition Handbook

Larry Singer, Georgia's chief information officer and head of the Georgia Technology Authority, announced he would resign Dec. 9.

Singer may be the first of many state CIOs to leave their posts following the election of 22 new governors this month. To help during this period of turnover, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers released a Transition Handbook for new CIOs and governors.

In Georgia, Sonny Perdue, a veterinarian and former state legislator, upset incumbent Gov. Roy Barnes, who appointed Singer to his CIO post more than two years ago.

In his Nov. 25 resignation letter to Barnes, Singer said: "While we had discussed my staying on until this coming spring, with the recent election, the demands on the financial resources of my family and the opportunity for me to serve the interests of the nation at large, I feel that now is the appropriate time for me to leave state service and return to the private and/or not-for-profit sector."

For now, Singer indicated he would return to Public Interest Breakthroughs (PIB), a nonprofit group that provides consulting services to governments on technology use, where he served as president before assuming his CIO role.

"If PIB and I can be of service to the GTA, the state of Georgia, or the incoming administration, I will be happy to make myself available," he wrote in the letter.

Until his resignation is effective, Singer will continue to serve as principal negotiator with two bidders during the first phase of negotiations for the Converged Communications Outsourcing Project (CCOP). The initiative will put all the state's telecom services under one contract, including local, long-distance and wireless phone services; high-speed online access; video, two-way radio, and local-area networks; and PC equipment and support.

The CCOP began March 2001, but was rebid this July following the revelation of WorldCom Inc.'s accounting scandals. WorldCom headed one of two groups chosen as finalists at the time.

Singer pointed to his work with the CCOP effort, modernizing the state's information systems, and creation of a new state portal as notable achievements.

He also was an active member of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, where he championed projects, such as component reuse — self-contained source code — as a cheaper, faster, and more reliable way to build e-government applications rather than writing code from scratch.