New York CIO: Cut Costs With StandardizationNew York CIO: Cut Costs With Standardization

Cut back on customizing. That's one of the guiding principles for New York's CIO James Dillon, who's determined to implement standardized systems for functions that cut across the state's numerous agencies. The first goal is finding a financial-management system to eventually replace the multiple systems that New York agencies have today.

"We need more aggregated information about how agencies are doing their business, so we can get the best cost possible--not just for IT, but for any service or product," he says. The current patchwork quilt of financial-management systems means the state is probably paying too much for products, isn't getting the right services, and isn't properly assessing total cost of ownership for IT, he says.

Rampant customization of financial-management systems has created other problems. When state workers with common fiscal and budgetary titles are transferred from one agency to another, they don't always have knowledge of the systems in different agencies. "Consequently, there's a great hit on resources we have to put into training those people," Dillon says. A common financial-management system would eliminate that problem.

A moratorium has been placed on upgrading existing financial-management systems while state agencies provide input for the selection process. Says Dillon, "You can't just impose a standard without considering budgetary implications on individual agencies."