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In
January 2001, while getting his footing as Virginia’s new governor, Mark R. Warner tackled the
state’s worst budget crisis in decades. A former
venture capitalist who had amassed a fortune in
telecommunications, he took a keen personal interest
in government spending on information technology. He
directed Secretary of Technology George C. Newstrom
to discover, to the dollar, what technology was
costing the taxpayers of
Virginia.
Newstrom
started digging. “We counted noses, floor space
and machines” in every public nook and cranny
throughout the Commonwealth, he recalls. The answer:
$902.56 million a year. Not only was the system
expensive, he concluded, it was unimaginably inefficient.
Spending on
the people and machines that made technology whirl
had pirouetted out of control. The state’s
technology could have been cartooned by Rube
Goldberg.
Last
year, the Wilder Commission on government efficiency
confirmed Newstrom’s findings that technology
funds were spilling into a bottomless pit. Seeing an
opportunity to save tax dollars and create more
efficient, more responsive government, Warner and
his technology secretary instigated the “little
revolution” that the governor had promised in his
inaugural speech.
In
one of the most significant legislative initiatives
of his administration, Gov. Warner pushed through
the General Assembly a program to modernize the
state’s IT functions. The result, on July 1, was
the consolidation and reorganization of three
agencies into one: the Virginia Information
Technologies Agency (VITA).
The
Warner administration contends that the state can
both save money and make government more effective
by consolidating IT missions, eradicating
duplication of effort and better training employees
to do their jobs. VITA will centralize purchasing,
implementing a “seat management” system for
maintaining PCs and software. It will consolidate
help desks. It will have the authority to assign
employees to projects that cut across multiple
agencies. By Newstrom’s
calculations, VITA will save Virginia
taxpayers a minimum of $100 million by 2005.
Cleaning
up the technology stink in
Virginia could become Warner’s most lasting legacy. The
reorganization, which the administration is touting
as the nation’s most extensive state IT reform,
also will cap an illustrious career for Newstrom,
who had been planning to retire from a long career
at info-tech giant Electronic Data Systems before
Warner tapped him for the job.
On
paper, the reorganization seems simple enough. The
administration has combined three separate agencies
-- the former Department of Information Technology (DIT),
the Department of Technology Planning (DTP) and the
Virginia Information Providers Network Authority (VIPNet)
– into one. A new organizational configuration has
been put into place, with separate units for
auditing, procurement, finance, network security,
human resources and the like. VITA’s director will
report to a board appointed jointly by the governor
and the General Assembly.
As
with the restructuring of any large organization,
the biggest challenge has been obtaining buy-in from
powerful agency heads, who are accustomed to
wielding considerable control over their IT
resources, as well as the workers themselves.
Newstrom has taken great pains to address both
constituencies. The administration is creating
carefully worded memoranda of understanding (MOA)
detailing the transition for each state agency.
(Non-executive agencies, such as universities, are
exempt.) Meanwhile, the Newstrom team has delivered
the message in town meetings across Virginia
— with speeches, PowerPoint presentations and
handouts--to explain the VITA implementation plan.
Furthermore,
the administration has promised to lay no one off
and to respect the rights and prerogatives due state
employees. “The majority of people will remain
where they are right now,” says Judy G. Napier, an
assistant secretary of technology. “Others will be
mapped to be where they are needed.” But the work
force might be trimmed if workers refuse the
opportunity to be retrained.
Some
state tech workers aren’t buying it. Communicating
anonymously by means of e-mail and Internet message
boards, some contended that VITA is set up to be a
massive, expensive bust. Judging by the number of
postings on the VITA-Concerns
forum on Yahoo, agitation peaked in June, just
before the consolidation was scheduled to take
place. Postings have trailed off since
then, but anecdotal evidence from sources in state
government suggests that many employees are taking a
wait-and-see attitude.
Early
this summer, disenchanted state employees focused on
Newstrom’s decision to hire BearingPoint, a
pricey, international consulting agency, to outline
how the technology of 94 executive branch agencies
might be revamped. Critics charged that the Newstrom
team adopted the outsiders’ report with little
modification, slapped a VITA logo onto the document,
and adopted it as VITA’s game plan. The BearingPoint
plan seemed to symbolize a process that was imposed
from the top down with little perspective from
veteran employees.
Newstrom
defends the move. Conceding his own limited
background in state government, he says
BearingPoint’s experts gave his team “relevant
knowledge of how
Virginia’s technology could work better.” The Secretary
of Technology’s five-person office did not possess
the resources to think through the massive overhaul
in the short period between the signing of the
enabling legislation and its implementation
beginning July 1.
Little
overt opposition has surfaced during Newstrom’s
road shows because state workers worry that speaking
out at public meeting will subject them to
retribution. Preferring to communicate under cover
of stealth e-mail addresses, they have chatted that
Newstrom does not understand the consequences of the
massive changes that now in motion. Agitated
employees fear the Newstrom team has failed to
address numerous transition problems, and there is
no back-up plan if VITA does not function according
to the PowerPointed vision.
A
particularly thorny issue is Newstrom’s plan for
making many technology jobs interchangeable. In
theory, this will make it easier to reassign
employees to anywhere in the state system that
they’re most needed. But many employees identify
with the missions of their particular agencies and
don’t want to be assigned at will. Moreover, some
agencies insist that they require unique skills that
aren’t interchangeable. The Library of Virginia
Board, for instance, has protested that its
archiving technologists possess unique skills.
Newstrom’s
answer: “We have run into every unique situation
in the world.” The transition team, he says, is
determined to work with each agency until the
wrinkles are ironed away. Apparently, the public
relations work is working. The VITA home page
displays rotating thank-you notes from employees who
appear to have written to VITA.
Some
of the critics’ charges may be well founded,
Newstrom admits, but he regards most of the protests
as stemming from a basic human reluctance to change.
To
minimize disruption, VITA is executing the
consolidation in measured steps. “Small agencies
will come in under VITA’s management first,”
explains Napier. The State Board of Elections’
needs are “tremendous,” she says, and that board
is eager to get under the VITA assistance umbrella.
Meanwhile, VITA has begun discussions with the giant
Department of Transportation.
Meanwhile,
Newstrom says he soon will unveil a new training
initiative. Skills training is one of the main
reasons, he asserts, that “VITA will become the
premier technology organization in the country.”
As
the transition continues, a question and answer from
the VITA site capsulize the current state of
affairs:
Q.
What happens to me if I am the last agency to
transition to VITA and no jobs remain in my job
role?
A.
If all job roles are filled by employees from
previous phases and you do not match the skill-set
for open jobs, then you will be assigned to the VITA
Resource Development and Projects Office. Please
remember that a total reorganization will not take
place until the last agency and the last service is
transitioned.
VITA
is targeted to be in full swing on
January 1, 2005 --
18 months after George Newstrom started to mold the
soul of a new state technology machine and stamp the
Warner administration with what could be its most
enduring legacy.
--
August 25, 2003
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