Government IT’s Next Step: Digital Investment
Run a tight ship in government IT and you will get more opportunities to chart a better course.
Cost optimization done right leads to new opportunities for digital investment, IT leaders from the General Services Administration (GSA), US Air Force, and the City of Omaha, Nebraska, said in a workshop on cost optimization at Gartner Symposium.
“Cost optimization isn’t necessarily cost-cutting,” said Derek Kruse, CIO for the City of Omaha and Douglas County. Cost cutting and cost controls are powerful tools for establishing credibility, but once you establish credibility, the organizations you serve are likely to give you opportunities to do more exciting and innovative work, he said.
Before his organization could get to that point, it had to become much more transparent about how the technology budget is spent — including monthly cost accounting briefings for key stakeholders, as well as for the public. “For the first year, it was just torture,” he said, but gradually his team was able to establish a pattern in which month after month it was able to demonstrate improvements.
Managing costs is important, “but the real benefit is likely to be on the value improvement side,” agreed Jerry Mechling, a VP at Gartner Research and a retired lecturer from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Public Policy who studies the impact of networked government services. “To get to that point is very important — a lot of us are not there yet.”
Full article by David F. Carr, Information Week
About the Author
Roger Chu is the Marketing Coordinator at GSAmart, the leading GSA sales and marketing partner for technology companies.
