By Maria Galindo
Each year, the State of Washington spends nearly $1 billion on IT spanning staff, infrastructure, applications, maintenance, and operations. Yet, prior to 2012, there was little visibility into the IT spend or the value it provided to the state.
A Lack of Transparency Eroding Confidence
Pressure was mounting. Adding to a longstanding concern by technology, legislative, and policy executives that the state lacked sufficient and credible data on technology investments, the Governor and Legislature increasingly demanded more detailed information on IT spend and performance to facilitate better decision-making.
At the same time, public confidence and trust in governmental efficiency and effectiveness was eroding. High-profile IT projects had gone off the rails, raising citizen awareness of IT spend. Cost analysis and benchmarking studies were mandated; results yielded little insight. Something had to give.
With a new Office of the Chief Information Officer, and a new CIO leading the agency, the state embarked on a journey to transparency that earned them a TBM Champion Award from the TBM Council.
Learn more about their success story, and full details on how they achieved these impressive results here.
Aggressive and Persistent Transparency
“We were so aggressive and persistent in really understanding the transparency of IT costs that it became law,” said Michael DeAngelo, Deputy CIO of the State of Washington.
Legislation was enacted mandating the use of Technology Business Management, which ultimately impacted 44 agencies in the state. Each agency began leveraging Apptio’s Cost Transparency and cost modeling capabilities. Not only did the agency achieve the transparency it was so desperately seeking, it also extended that transparency to the public by educating and informing citizens about its program.
An Ongoing Journey
In addition to ongoing efforts to inform participating state agencies, the Legislature and general public, the state plans to:
- Review and refine taxonomy to improve data quality
- Continue to discover, cleanse, and utilize data
- Create a policy that will identify required minimum data reporting
- Socialize outcomes with legislators and stakeholders
Congratulations to the State of Washington for using TBM to transform their organization in such an impressive and effective manner. You can check out all the details of their success story here.