[AccessD] Somewhat OT: Secrets of successful IT projects

Hi Gustav,
Probably not exactly what he meant but here's my story of the most
out-of-the-way IT department I have run across.

About 5 years ago, along with two other independent consulting partners, I
worked on a county wide "GIS study". We were to investigate the state of
digital mapping and data in the county and recommend a course of action.

The project involved staff interviews and digging through a lot of files. In
the end we found that the biggest issue in the county was that they had no
"IT" department at all. They had a data processing department under the
accounting director. Typical setup around for a few decades ago. The Data
Processing director acted as the CIO for the county. But being near
retirement he had no desire to lead an IT dept. and also had no desire to
have any more staff under his control. He had decided a long time ago that
he would not involve himself in other departments IT activities other than
to roadblock new projects that would involve all depts. Every dept. had a
remarkable set of digital mapping and data in progress. Unfortunately none
of it could integrate with another department. Because of this they were
actually developing emergency planning procedures by hand on paper maps!
(They have a nuclear power plant in the vicinity which requires they do this
every so many years.) 

The short story is that we recommended a complete restructuring of the
county government concerning IT functions by creating an independent IT
department with a GIS manager included. They hired an IT director and a GIS
Manager.

Within a year departments were utilizing each others digital mapping and
data - mainly because the GIS world had recently embraced interoperability
of diverse standards, leaving the proprietary formats for history but had
they not taken our recommendations each department's information would most
likely still be completely isolated from the others.

BTW Our project actually paid for itself in the year of implementation
because they discovered (from our report) that they had numerous departments
planning a aerial mapping contracts for the same product!)

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 4:30 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Somewhat OT: Secrets of successful IT projects

Thanks Steve.

Could someone please explain what an "out-of-the-way IT department" is?

/gustav