Digital Government in Utah, Looking Out 2-5 Years

TREND 1: Governance will be better defined resulting in enterprise projects being the default in application development. Over the next three years a common understanding by the legislative leadership, agency leadership and their staffs with regard to the role of the CIO will evolve.  A new understanding will occur reinforcing that the state enterprise is more than simply a "sum of its parts."  This understanding will result in an increase in enterprise IT projects that will move more rapidly to fruition. Also, the planning process will be well defined and driven by enterprise architecture. All infrastructure components that are built or bought will conform to that architecture. Financial monitoring and audits will ensure compliance.

TREND 2: Wiser IT purchasing decisions will be made. As a byproduct of trend 1, IT purchases will become more standardized and will also primarily be conducted electronically. As a result, complexity will be reduced with regard to product purchases. Management will be far better informed of the cost options involved since they will receive better information on IT purchases.

TREND 3: Consolidations Will Continue. Multiple IT consolidation projects begun in the next two years will continue to accelerate and expand. Most desktop and server consolidation activities will be complete. Much of the state's data will have moved to the enterprise storage array network (SAN). The desire for cost advantages offered by Voice over IP technology will drive the need for network consolidation. This trend will continue in spite of shifts in CIO leadership because it is driven not such so much by the management styles of the leadership but by the leaders responses to the realities of the technology and economic environments.  Employee dissatisfaction in the wake of consolidations will need to be continuously and effectively managed or such efforts could be delayed.

TREND 4: Data Sharing Will Be Easier and More Common. Agency collaboration will continue to improve due to greater standardization of data policy. XML and similar new standards will evolve leading to easier more efficient data sharing. Such activities will be driven by the continuing priority of homeland security efforts.

TREND 5: Universal Access Arrives (Almost) and With it True Cost Savings. Businesses with connections to the Internet will approach universal access. Many of the state's business processes will be online with full end-to-end transactions. For government to business transactions, offline processes will be eliminated for the vast majority of these services.  These services will solely be conducted through both wireless and wired devices.  Since government is providing many of its services solely through electronic channels, the real promise of digital government advocates of cost savings will become a reality. Government to citizen service adoption rates will continue to grow and cost saving will also begin to accrue in this space.

TREND 6: Building enterprise applications will lead to some agency re-structuring. Transformations of many basic agency business processes are well underway. Enterprise IT projects sometimes get very complex during signoffs on final business requirements. Applications that are required to adjust to every "quirk" of every different agency's business process rapidly will become too complex and expensive to implement. This leads to risk exposure and long project timelines. In response to these issues, agency partners soon realize they must make compromises in how they conduct business. Many of these compromises inevitably will lead to changes in fundamental business processes. Enterprise projects become the method by which the transformations of these processes occur. Once multiple agencies agree on allowing a single application to receive information and issue for example, a registration, license or permit, then establishing a common product support process becomes essential. This support channel must appear seamless to the customer.  Citizens want a single relationship with government. They do not like having to manage a lot of separate relationships with different government agencies.  Once these common functions are created, they must be maintained through ongoing funding that leads to agency re-structuring of personnel and duties that operate around functional as opposed to simply program related responsibilities.

TREND 7: IT funding will remain a challenge.

Funding for IT will continue to be difficult at the state level unless credible ROI models are created and executed. Although funding is currently on the decline it is anticipated that over the next three to five years IT state funding will remain flat. Federal IT funding is likely to increase slightly particularly in the area of homeland security. Some of those funds will find their way into state IT projects. However, if federal tax cuts are maintained or increased a squeeze on IT expenditures in other areas may occur.

Bonding seems to be a natural solution to some types of technology project funding. The reason for this is that new systems often require substantial up-front investment followed over the long-term, by lower but not insignificant ongoing maintenance and support costs. IT projects can payoff but not quickly. In the long-term it reduces certain types of personnel tasks that are labor intensive, as well as printing and mailing costs. However, until significant percentages of the total customer population uses the electronic channel, costs will not decline. Conversely, once a critical mass is reached, cost savings begin to accrue. Innovative repayment schedules could be developed, with a balloon at the end to allow time for savings to accrue. However, a bonding initiative strategy would require convincing the legislature to overcome its reluctance. Agencies would also have to be better able to predict its cost savings so that it met its re-payment obligations. Cost savings would be captured for ongoing support and maintenance, repayment of the debt and even funding new IT systems development projects. Projects that are the most likely candidates for bonding would be specialty business service applications where adoption rates could ramp up very quickly. Utah will be looking closely at other state experiments in this arena.

Last update: 6/11/2004; 9:22:16 AM.