Re-imagining e-Government

The 15 teams volunteered to band together to help root out the best vendor prices and help construct the best IT buying plans for their departments. “The skunk-works teams are valuable for drawing on the expertise of the various agencies,” says Dan Storkamp, director of information and technology for the state Department of Corrections and a team member. “Various teams looked at things like hardware, software, and IT professional services, and worked with vendors to create some common standards for purchasing. They were then able to pass along what they learned to the other teams.”

In the 11 months since the new the Office of Enterprise Technology began work, signs of transformation in government operations are already evident. The office is nudging the state onto voice over Internet protocol (or VOIP) telephone systems through the existing Minnesota’s Network for Enterprise Tele-communications, a private/public partnership that brokers data, voice, and video services for state and local government and education agencies.

The technology office also recently announced plans to work with the departments of Transportation and Revenue to identify which agency IT functions should become shared or centralized. Some of the candidates for central management include all local-area networks (LANs, which connect just a few users), wide-area networks (connecting several LANs), data centers, server-management chores, security technology, help-desk services, IT training, and server-based applications that are used throughout as many state agencies as possible.

“This statute is saying, ‘Let’s move toward a shared computing model and see what utilities can be centrally managed, but let’s leave enough for unique processing of applications at the agency level,’” Khanna says. “So over a period of, say, 10 years, I’m hoping that the level of shared services goes up, allowing enough focus at the agency level for unique processing. It’s a work in progress.”

Khanna’s department has another aim: Recruiting talented young people, particularly those with IT capabilities, to work in state government. “When most people think of the public service sector, they think of a system that’s slow and not innovative—a bureaucracy. When they think of the private sector, they think of innovation, and how nimble and dynamic it is,” he says. “But public workers are equally hard working, equally innovative, and equally passionate.”

Sticking to the Budget

Even with his passionate advocacy, Khanna is limited by the Office of Enterprise Technology’s budget, which was set in legislative stone before his arrival. He had to submit a supplemental budget request to deal with the state’s cyber-security issues. “The statute has given a huge operational agenda to [the technology office], and that’s out of sync with the realities of the budget,” Khanna says. “So we have a lot of work to do, and we’ve started by defining the processes that need to be developed. I’m convinced that if we do the right things up front, we will get the funding that we need.”

One factor in his favor is that the Office of Enterprise Technology’s plans have virtually unanimous bipartisan support in the legislature. Khanna has made it clear that the need for those plans is urgent.

“We’re five years behind in technology compared to the private sector; but so is every other state,” he observes. “We don’t need to be cutting edge. But we can’t afford to be 10 years behind, either.”