Securing Money For I.T.Securing Money For I.T.

It's a classic carrot-and-stick approach. States can get millions of dollars for homeland-security IT projects by adhering to architecture standards established by the federal government. "Money is a great motivator," Utah CIO Phillip Windley said last week at a meeting in St. Louis of the federal government's top IT officials and state CIOs. Homeland security CIO Steve Cooper and Bush administration IT chief Mark Forman asked for help developing standards for homeland-security IT projects. "This is new for us," Forman says. "We've been dictators, and it didn't work. We need to be partners." But once the standards are set, the states must use them to get the money.

One such project: an interstate communications expressway to exchange homeland-security information among local, state, and federal agencies. The new information superhighway would be patterned after the interstate highway system, which was originally seen as an efficient network for military transport.