The State Worker recently told you about an IT blogger who contended that Chief Info Officer Teri Takai's "Wins for California's Information Technology" list overstated the state's high tech successes. The blogger, Michael Krigsman, concluded after analyzing a lengthy list of state projects that, "California's CIO presented an unbalanced, and perhaps even misleading, view of success and likely failure on the state's IT project portfolio."
Krigsman has now pulled back on that assessment, according to a recent entry on his ZDNet blog:
After a lengthy conversation with senior representatives of California's CIO, Teri Takai, I no longer believe Takai deliberately intended to mislead the public over project duration reporting in California's 2009 IT Strategic Plan.
The reason for Krigsman's change of heart?
Takai's representatives, Adrian Farley, Chief Deputy Director for Policy and Program Management, and Bill Maile, Director of Communications, convincingly explained how the duration reporting discrepancies I identified in a previous blog post arose from "unclear language" and "nomenclature."
Krigsman's conclusion:
Large IT projects combine substantial cost with high complexity, creating tremendous risk and corresponding opportunities for waste. Government agencies have an obligation to report this data clearly and accurately.
To the Office of the CIO's credit, Farley and Maile readily acknowledged the confusion and said they will update their strategic plan with specific time durations for each project.
Click this link to Krigsman's blog post for more details and analysis.
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