SPECIAL FOCUS

Does Your Agency Need a CIO?

Why your "computer guy" should have the title
"Chief Information Officer"

BY CHIP COLLIS

The Apollo 11 mission could be run from your desktop today, as long as you're not using it for solitaire.

The CIO—chief information officer—is a completely new animal in the management menagerie. Its evolution came about as the result of a revolution, the so- called "electronic revolution." With the explosive growth of the amount and types of data available, business was forced to adapt, spawning an entire new species of professional: the Information Technology (IT) professional. And the CIO is at the top of this species, in the same way that the CFO tops the accounting species.

In this article, we're going to examine this new "beastie," and whether or not your parks and recreation organization should have a CIO of its very own.

The Electronic Revolution

"You say you want a revolution? Well, you know, we all want to change the world."

- "Revolution 1," The Beatles (The While Album), 1968

So sang the Beatles in the late '60s. But it wasn't until almost 20 years later that the business world realized that a revolution was indeed in progress, and had been since they started computerizing their businesses about the same time as the lads from Liverpool arrived in America. When the PC arrived, followed by the computer network shortly thereafter, the pace of computerization skyrocketed, and soon everyone was talking about the "electronic revolution" and the "information age."

Despite the ubiquity of those terms, however, no one realized the vast scope of the revolution. In its implications, it is as big as the one that supplanted the agrarian age in favor of the industrial age. It has fundamentally changed the way people live, work and play. And it ain't over yet!

Most of business belatedly recognized the need for computerization in order to maintain its competitive edge. Accordingly, a lot of money has been spent on a lot of hardware and software, as well as the professionals to maintain them, in an effort to catch up. Unfortunately, a lot of this money was wasted because of the lack of a coherent IT strategy.

Adapting in a Faster World

"You tell me it's the institution. Well, you know, you'd better free your mind instead. "

Despite the way it has embraced technology, business has not fully freed its mind from its institutional thinking. The pace of change has been too quick to adapt in an organized fashion. And this pace continues to accelerate.

You need only to look at your own district to see that this is true. Just this week I stood outside the door of our park district's IT professional and looked at a row of old Pentium 133s lined up on the floor, each in various stages of disrepair. Three years ago, these were state-of- the-art, purchased at substantial cost. Now they're die next thing to junk, being cannibalized to add a few

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SPECIAL FOCUS

The word "technology" covers a lot of ground- computers, telecommunications, copiers—in short, anything that could have been bitten by the Y2K bug.

more months to the life spans of their brethren.

Clearly, the concept of an individual desktop PC as a capital purchase needs a little refinement. This is a holdover from the time when computers were as large as filing cabinets. They and their programs would remain virtually unchanged for 5, 10 or even 20 years. This was also the time when data processing was almost exclusively used for financial functions. Accordingly, companies progressive enough to create a computer department usually placed it under the direction of the CFO.

Again, this institutional -thinking persists in park districts today. At a recent technology seminar, the three speakers were two district CFO's and a consultant from an accounting firm. Depending on the circumstances of your district, this might be necessary, but it is not optimal. The last great paradigm shift of the industrial age was the shift of focus from production to marketing. A similar shift is necessary now for the role of IT. Just as marketing evolved from a sub-function of sales to become an overall philosophy that affected the entire organization, so too is IT no longer merely a tool for accounting. Information technology has grown beyond that, and its continued growth necessitates a company- wide strategy for the collection and utilization of information (data) which has become a commodity.

To a large degree, the rise of marketing drove the rise of IT, for it is in support of marketing that data is seen to have its greatest worth as a commodity. And, like marketing, IT now permeates every facet of business.

The Three Kinds of Technology

The word "technology" covers a lot of ground— computers, telecommunications, copiers—in short, anything that could have been bitten by the Y2K bug. All these can be classified under three separate but related roles that technology can play in your district.

Personal Technology

The first role, the one that touches nearly every worker today, is the concept of the automated office, i.e., anything related to personal productivity: word processing, e-mail, personal organizers and telecommunications. Because of this focus on individual productivity, even though people may be sharing resources like printers, I call this category "personal technology."

Process Technology

The second role, one that many people erroneously think is the primary benefit of technology, is the automation of manual processes. A focus on multi-user capability for a specific job function characterizes this role, which I call "process technology." As an example, let's look at program registration.

Let's say you're taking program registrations at your main office. Each program has a file folder associated with it. Each folder has a sheet with empty lines on it, the number of lines corresponding to the spots available in each program. As someone calls or comes in to register, the registration clerk writes that person's name and phone number on the sheet. When the sheet is full, the program is full. After the program is completed, the sheet is either filed or thrown away. But what if you want to offer more programs than one person can handle?

A simple solution to increase efficiency would be to maintain each program as a separate spreadsheet within a single Excel workbook. If you wanted to expand the sites where people can register, a more complex multiuser application over a wide-area network could be the answer.

Again, many people have the misconception that technology's best use is to take a slow process like this and make it faster. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, in this example, it may be a big mistake to automate the process. If all you're going to do is fill up lines with names and phone numbers, you'd be better off hiring another clerk instead of investing in the equipment, software and training. That's because, in this example, you're collecting data, but not using it.

Enterprise Technology

Technology's third role—enterprise technology— automates the gathering, analysis, dissemination and exploitation of mission-critical information. Here we see the true benefit of technology whereby your data stops merely taking up other resources and becomes a resource, a commodity, in and of itself.

Let's take a look at the same registration example, only rather than increasing programs, the district decides to start collecting more information about the users:

address, age, and size of household, in addition to name and phone number. This way, the district's program staff can determine if some programs are more popular with certain demographics and maybe even tailor programming to match.

Now you've not only streamlined the process so that one person can do more work, you've also made use of an asset which would otherwise have gone to waste. One of the advantages of technology is that the same system can often support all three roles. Prudent expenditures on PCs, networks and servers can make one dollar do the work of three. But you need someone to support this infrastructure and guide this growth. You need an IT department.

The IT Department

"You ask me for a contribution, well, you know, we're all doing what we can."

The IT department is an internal service department, similar to finance and accounting or human resources

18 ¦ Illinois Parks and Recreation

DO YOU NEED A CIO?

(HR). It's not a revenue generator, it's a cost center. Even in a software or technology company, internal IT is separate from R&D (research and development) or production, just as if you were making cars instead of programs.

The IT department does what it can to manage the technology-related resources within your organization- hardware, software, networks/telecommunications and data-in support of the personal, process and enterprise goals and objectives.

But this task is getting more complex as time passes for two reasons. First, technology itself is getting more complex in terms of speed, capacity and capability. The standard desktop PC today has more power than the network file servers of three years ago; more, even, than used to be held in a whole roomful of NASA computers. The Apollo 11 mission could be run from your desktop today, as long as you're not using it for solitaire.

The second reason IT'S task is so complex relates to the first: today's infrastructure usually was put together piecemeal over the years. Trying to make all these pieces work together in a cohesive fashion is one of the biggest challenges facing all businesses.

This is where the CIO comes in. It is the job of the CIO to direct the activities of the IT department to optimize the usage of all the resources in place, while setting out a strategic vision for the organization to keep-up with THE incredible pace of change.

Do You Need a CIO?

Like any other business, parks and recreation acquires, utilizes and maintains assets to market goods or services. Let's take a look at the assets your park district has. You've got real property: land and facilities. You've got capital equipment. You've got employees. Hopefully, you've got money. And you have data.

Now, let's take a look at the goods and services you provide: public recreation areas and facilities as well as recreational programs. And you use marketing to ensure that the public uses these goods and services.

If you're like most districts, you have a senior staff person, often a director, responsible for each of these areas: a parks director, an HR director, a finance director, a program director, a marketing director. These are professionals with specific expertise in their areas. Why don't you have an information director-a CIO? Like your other professionals, the CIO has specific expertise in all the aspects of technology we've discussed, understands the value and use of data, and is abreast of the latest IT industry developments and their benefits to your district. In addition to directing the activities of the IT department, the CIO has one exceedingly important responsibility: the strategic technology plan.

"You say you got a real solution? Well, you know, we'd all love to see the plan. "

If your park district doesn't have one already, you should seriously consider developing a strategic technology plan (unless you enjoy spending thousands of dollars on a system today, and then scrapping the whole thing in three to five years and starting over).

A strategic technology plan reviews the status of technology throughout the district and lays out achievable goals and objectives in one-, two- and three- year time frames. These would include specific objectives for each department to enhance its performance through the use of technology at the personal, process and enterprise levels.

The strategic technology plan is to your data what your budget is to your money. Creating, maintaining, and implementing this plan is the primary function of the CIO. In fact, it's the first thing a CIO should do upon taking the job

Some districts I know have recognized the need for IT staff and have hired accordingly. Oftentimes, they've hired in a network specialist or Web master to perform some of the specific tasks associated with an IT department. This individual almost invariably becomes known as "the computer guy" and ends up responsible for almost everything with a microprocessor. Some of these same organizations have also hired consultants to help them develop their strategic technology plans.

With all due respect, these folks need a relocation consultant for their carts, which they've placed before their horses. Specific technological expertise is cheap and plentiful. If there's only room on your budget for one "computer guy," make it the CIO.

Without a strategic technology plan, and a CIO to create and enforce it, your district will be like a ship without charts or a pilot, drifting aimlessly and expensively in the information ocean. But with a CIO, your data can be managed and utilized efficiently and effectively, and your district will be poised to take full advantage of the opportunities provided by the electronic revolution.

"Don't you know it's gonna be alright. "

Without a strategic technology plan, and a CIO to create and enforce it, your district will be like a ship without charts or a pilot, drifting aimlessly and expensively in the information ocean.

CHIP COLLIS

is o commissioner for the Elmhurst Pork District, serves on the IAPD technology Committee and choirs the IAPD Strategic Technology Planning Committee. With an MS in Computer Science and 14 years experience, he currently manages a development team for Bank One. His family includes wife, Cyndy, ond children Richie, 8, and Atlie, 4. He can be reached at ccollis@mediaone.net

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