Guide gets IT projects going
- By Eric Kulisch
- Dec 10, 2000
Government officials who want to harness their organization's vast information
resources in innovative ways have a new management road map to help them.
Last week, the Center for Technology in Government debuted the Insider's Guide to Using Information in Government, a Web-based resource
that provides a framework for information technology managers to use in
planning and evaluating projects.
"Getting them started is always the hard part," said Richard Delaney,
an e-government management consultant based in Washington, D.C. Officials
often are intrigued by the possibility of a new application, "but then it
degenerates because they don't know how to proceed," Delaney said.
The guide is the outgrowth of lessons learned from CTG's three-year
effort to solve the practical problems of eight New York state agencies
that were building business plans to develop new information systems.
Among the case studies, for example, is a description of how the
Office of the State Comptroller's Division of Municipal Affairs developed
new ways to capture and organize information so the agency could be a more
effective service organization rather than strictly a regulatory one.
As government organizations rush to embrace the vision of delivering
services electronically, the complexity of initiating new ways of doing
business often overwhelms department heads and their staffs. CTG, part of
Albany State University of New York, helps officials in the early stages
of project definition create a business plan for their initiatives, CTG
director Sharon Dawes said.
"What's useful is not necessarily to shape the answers, but shape the
questions," Delaney said. The CTG effort is valuable, he said, because it
shows officials that there are common approaches for developing their unique
ideas.