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Service Culture Brand

Service Desk

Gartner reported recently that 46% of CIO’s believe culture is the biggest barrier to digital strategy transformation.  I believe the barrier to digital change, and the actual root cause of the issue, is the fundamental and deep-rooted attitude towards customer service.

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Blockchain Fatigue

Blockchain Curve

As my team and my readers know I am very reluctant to even discuss, much less put any effort towards, what I believe is “Hyped Emerging Technology” .    It is my view that blockchain is a niche technology, not a disruptive technology as it is often touted.  To be a disruptive technology it must transform the current business model with lower cost and productivity gains which result in a high adoption rate. 

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Technology is a Never-Ending Apprenticeship

Team Meeting

Working in the technology field is a lifetime apprenticeship. In this industry, we continually introduce innovative technologies and those technologies challenge our workforce, creating the ever-present skills gap between technology professionals and their current jobs. We must endlessly enhance our knowledge and supplement our technical skills throughout our careers, or we quickly fall behind.

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You Can't Delegate Responsibility

Org Chart

I took an email survey recently that asked what other “Chiefs” there were in our organization.  Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Data Officer, Chief Communications Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, Chief Visionary Officer, etc.  I had to click the box marked none and was reminded of my experience as a panelist with a group of CIO’s in 2019 where I was asked if Nebraska had a Chief Customer Officer. 

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Storytelling

2014-09-26 Change Management by Johan Lange is licensed under CC BY 2.0

As an extreme introvert, I was voluntarily social distancing way before it was required. Social settings totally exhaust me unless everyone in attendance is describing something technical to me which is why I appreciate industry conferences where I can easily move any conversation towards something technical.

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Legacy Attitudes

Mobile Digital Computer

Recent theories about the cause of the widespread State unemployment system failures of 2020 continue to suspect legacy systems.  It is almost to the point of claiming victimhood instead of dealing with the root cause.

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What's in a name?

Monitors in DevOps Screen

I am still trying to figure out exactly what DevOps is. This confusion is not from lack of research. I have read countless articles, reviewed multiple white papers, and investigated this topic in discussions with knowledgeable people. The further I investigate the more I realize, an objective, standard definition for DevOps either does not exist or is very elusive.

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Nebraska’s Consolidation

Ed Keynote

I was honored to be asked to provide the Keynote address for Central IT SLED Pack this month regarding Nebraska’s Consolidation effort.  While preparing for this engagement I realized that I needed to define what exactly took place in Nebraska .  I once defined our consolidation as a “hybrid consolidation” but it became much more after four years of continued development, reaching all levels of government (city, county, and state). It is now closer to a full consolidation.

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Inflated Expectations

AI

I just finished Reading a white paper on a public sector technology project, but the article never actually stated that the technology was successfully deployed and that it was working effectively.  The article was written in a way that I believed it was in production and fully adopted...

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Technology Standards

Monitors

When it comes to technology strategies, there is clear debate about whether it’s best to standardize services or adopt a custom approach.  Seems that a greater degree of the technology and manufacturing world agree that standard service is optimal, while most certainly customization is the preferred approach from the business organization.

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2020 Year in Review

IT Services

It has become my annual tradition during my tenure at the State of Nebraska to publicize this organization’s focus on what I call “IT as a Service”.  Back in 2017, we were tracking fundamental data and we noticed some new trends had started to form just as the OCIO Service Desk was becoming the centralized support channel for all of the cabinet agencies.

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