RSSGSA CIO Casey Coleman interview
Michael Krigsman at ZDNet’s Project Failures blog has posted a podcast interview with General Services Administraiton CIO Casey Coleman here. The GSA has a massive mandate to supply the government with products and services, and the corresponding breadth and volume of technology and procurement projects is breathtaking. Coleman faces all the challenges of a CIO leading any extremely large IT organization, combined with all the particular difficulties inherent with government work.
Something striking in Coleman’s explanations behind her organization’s requirements for custom software is the similarity to many arguments you hear in the private sector justifying the same ends. The difference, of course, is that her justifications have the force of law. But the mandates she is being handed by Congress and the Administration aren’t necessarily originated with any more knowledge or expertise than those handed down to your average private IT organization by clueless executives.
It’s a truism that elected officials can’t be made to learn until it directly affects their campaign coffers, but business leaders can be motivated by other means. An aspect of the holy grail of IT/Business alignment that is often overlooked is the opportunity that closer integration with business units (and their leaders) offers to educate and motivate decision makers with technology priorities and limitations (Paul Murphy, incidentally, has an interesting post on advocacy and education that might help define the terms of engagement for CIOs still getting used to the whole alignment thing).
The next time a business unit comes to you with all the reasons that an easily installed, relatively inexpensive off-the-shelf solution can’t possibly work for them in their environment, because they have to do this, that, and the other thing the same way that they have always done this, that, and the other thing, challenge the economic arguments behind their assumptions. IT isn’t free, but the costs aren’t always adequately exposed to the business users determining their requirements. A hangover of the old paradigm that IT’s customer is the business is the corresponding cliche that the customer is always right. Most of us know that isn’t the case, but the customer will rarely believe it.
By forcing the business units out of their customer role and into a closer partnership, you have the opportunity to demonstrate that much of the determination of whether a technology initiative succeeds or fails is in fact in their hands. It has more to do with the business unit’s processes and its flexibility in rearranging those to use IT efficiently than it does with IT’s relatively limited role in implementations. Remember, you’re not the government, and the COO’s word doesn’t have the force of law.
