Wis. Debates Power of CIO

Wisconsin, which has suffered some high-profile government IT project mishaps (and here and here), is debating whether to elevate its chief information officer to reporting directly to the governor. An independent group called the Task Force on Information Technology Failures spent this year investigating the state's troubled IT management. Among its recommendations in its report released this summer, the task force suggested the state legislature elevate the state CIO (a position now held by Oskar Anderson) to report to the governor. (Right now the state CIO is head of the Division of Enterprise Technology, which is deep within the state's Department of Administration.)

An editorial yesterday in the Wisconsin State Journal argued that elevating the CIO position "should be one of the prime elements in a reform plan responding to a series of costly foul-ups that has plagued efforts to improve the state 's computerized data systems."

Although a good idea, it is not the answer to what ails Wisconsin IT. Plenty of public agencies and private-sector companies have a CIO reporting to the head of the company or agency, but IT projects at these organizations still regularly go off the rails. Wisconsin suffers from project management problems, not how much power the CIO has. (Still, elevating the CIO is a great idea if Wisconsin wants to create the management environment in which IT can become a strategic player in helping state agencies meet mission goals and improving state government performance. But that's a totally different discussion.)

What would help state IT projects become more successful, as the editorial points out, is to re-establish the two groups that oversee IT project management. "The reform should encompass an array of other solutions, including re-establishing two dormant oversight panels -- the Legislature 's Joint Committee on Information Policy and Technology, and the Information Technology Management Board -- and improving technology project specifications and standards," according to the editorial.

But the recommendations are headed no where. The Journal reports that Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) is cool to the idea. After all, Doyle killed the cabinet-level IT agency that former Wisconsin Gov. Scott McCallum (R) created and operated from 2001 to 2003. Doyle thought the agency was inefficient.