Just Do The Right Thing The First Time

Electronic Landscape 'Xeon'

The best thing about writing the CIO blog is hearing back from the Agencies when they have taken interest in a particular topic. We take an enterprise view of the technology infrastructure at the State of Nebraska, and it is nice to know that our blog is serving as a window to that vision. The biggest question to cross my desk this month was this...
More...

 

 


Sometimes it’s the things you Don’t See

Mission Statement

Every once in awhile I am asked where I get the topics for my blog. This one came to me in the form of an email. The message, from one of our customer agencies, reminded me of how well we have embraced our mission statement at the OCIO, Respect for the Taxpayers of the State of Nebraska.
More...

 

 


Project Success Factors

compass

In the IT community, we follow trade magazines to keep in touch with industry news and shifting trends. Some of us even go as far as to dig up the research leading to the claims in those publications. For years, I have subscribed to the CHAOS Report from the Standish Group. Standish focuses on software projects, successes, and failures, applying the objective analysis of thousands of projects worldwide. The CHAOS report is the largest and longest-running project research study to my knowledge, for years cited by industry magazines as the standard of research. Over time, I have seen little change in the report’s top factors for success except for one recent addition, “emotional maturity”.
More...

 

 


Technology without a Business Case

Factory

I had the opportunity last month to engage with several other State CIO’s at the CIO Confidential conference in San Antonio, Texas. One of the big topics of conversation for State governments was “Emerging Technology”.
More...

 

 


The True Cost of IT

Bubble

The State of Nebraska utilizes a chargeback accounting model for its shared enterprise IT services. IT chargeback is a financial system for IT departments that works to afford the technology services that are needed by the enterprise business organizations.
More...

 

 


Incremental Innovation

Baseball Stadium

With the College World Series starting this week in Omaha, baseball metaphors are once again on my mind. When it comes to innovation or transformation, I am not looking for the homerun, simply small base hits.
More...

 

 


Government as an Enterprise Cloud Provider

Servers

Over the past few years, I have read countless magazine articles with nearly identical statements from different IT Leaders, “Our office is actively working to move everything to the cloud”. We all desperately want an easy button to fix our problems. The hype cycle surrounding the cloud is in full swing and this is why. 
More...

 

 


The Practice of Leadership

Runner

I have always thought about leadership in the binary.  I believe only two types of leaders exist, those who react to issues and those who can envision and then articulate forward direction.  When invited to present on the topic of “Leadership”, I normally speak about two different styles of leadership: Transactional Leadership and Transformational Leadership
More...

 

 


Process Improvement: What's in a name?

Password Reset

Sometimes the best process improvement efforts are the least fascinating and easiest tools to implement. One year ago we initiated an enterprise self-service password reset tool and as a result, we noticed some dramatic results. I will share the February metrics as an example:
More...

 

 


Platform Modernization

Tree

In my recent career, I have noticed a common misperception concerning legacy systems which strikes my interest. What I have heard said is that, “X system does not meet the users’ needs.” I remember a pearl of wisdom from my childhood, “There’s no tree but bears some fruit”. Translation: there is nothing so useless that it can’t be of some use.
More...

 

 


What Problem Are We Trying To Solve?

People solving a problem

At times, every technology organization will struggle to define a problem they want to solve. After four years serving in public sector IT and more than 20 spent in private sector IT roles, I can verify this is a common thread across the field.
More...

 

 


2018 Customer Service Year in Review

OCIO Logo

Customer service is difficult to quantify, especially for a group that thinks in 1’s and 0’s.
More...

 

 



Blog Archives: