Dire StatesDire States

Better architecture planning offers another long-term investment that could help control IT spending. Utah, which has a $420 million deficit in its current fiscal year, is spending $25 million to create a more-integrated, cross-agency enterprise architecture so it can eliminate stovepipe systems that keep agencies from collaborating easily. CIO Val Oveson offers the example of how a child's repeated truancy may indicate bigger family problems, and that information could be valuable to more than one agency.

Homeland security creates the most pressing reason for standardizing systems and architecture at all levels of government. States are devoting considerable IT dollars to these projects, including ones aimed at letting emergency workers communicate with each other as well as with state and federal authorities. States are wary about delaying these investments, and in some cases the federal government requires participation.

Other IT spending that can't wait includes federally mandated improvements to systems that support health and welfare needs such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Despite facing a $1 billion shortfall in its budget over the next two fiscal years and a $215 million budget gap this year, Maine is going ahead with a $9 million program to develop an IT system that complies with HIPAA's patient-privacy and data-security requirements. Nearly 90% of the project has been outsourced to Keane Inc. and Client Services Network Inc.

Maine uses a cost-benefit ROI test on IT projects that cost more than $50,000. IT competes against other programs for limited dollars, and CIO Harry Lanphear believes it's the best chance to win scarce funds from the Legislature. "Adding ROI to a budget request kicks it up a notch," Lanphear says. "We're saying, 'Here's our project and we justified it.' That helps us."

That's the kind of help more state IT chiefs will need if they want to move their states' IT ahead in these difficult times.

Photograph of Val Oveson by Lance W. Clayton