Doing it their way

Facing tight budgets after years of cuts, chief information officers in state and local governments are trying nontraditional methods to fund information technology initiatives.

Some of those methods include:

Charging fees for online services for businesses.

Awarding share-in-savings contracts in which vendors share the risks and the savings.

Using cooperative purchasing agreements so multiple jurisdictions can use the same contract.

Buying common products and services enterprisewide to capitalize on the governments' buying power.