Over the past few years, the State of West Virginia has undertaken a major effort to consolidate and standardize its IT infrastructure. Under the direction of CTO Kyle Schafer, the state has implemented centralized IT policies and procedures as well as standard hardware and software systems throughout its agencies. 

Going forward, the West Virginia Office of Technology's plans include enhancing employee mobility through virtual offices and putting a statewide ERP system into use. In an interview with FierceCIO, Schafer shares some of his insights on how to reduce costs without diminishing service levels, as well as some thoughts on security challenges and social networking.

FierceCIO: What information technologies have been useful in helping the state address budget challenges?

Kyle Schafer: The biggest bang for the buck we're getting is in process and procedures. Six years ago, every agency was its own silo. We're standardizing our email across the state. We had more than 148 different email domains, and now we're down to one. We're standardizing our phone system across the state.

The challenge also centers on finding efficiencies. We put an age and condition procedure in place [for technology upgrades]. As an agency needs to replace a server, we're replacing it by consolidating it in a virtual environment or central data center. We're killing out data centers through natural attrition.

There are a lot of services that could be automated that haven't been automated because we haven't had the resources to do it.    

FCIO: What kinds of saving have you achieved?

Schafer: Prior to the consolidation, the IT [expenditure] within the executive branch, excluding labor, was $53 million. Since we began our consolidation efforts, expenses have gone down consistently. Last year it was down to $42.5 million. Across the executive branch there were 678 IT professionals. We're down to 598 and, at the same time, we're increasing our service levels. Anybody can cut costs, but if you do it at the sacrifice of customer service, it's not sustainable. Our true testament of success is that every agency that we've consolidated re-signed up with our service level agreements.

FCIO: What are some of the greatest security challenges today for the enterprise network?

Schafer: The biggest challenge that we have is that things change daily. We get hundreds of attempts to get into our network on a daily basis. We have a chief security officer whose full-time job is to monitor the network for intrusions.

Ninety percent of the time when we have a security issue, it's because of a human issue. These are the types of things we think are preventable through education. We require online security training for every state employee who is connected to the network.

FCIO: What issues should the IT industry be spending more time on to provide better tools for large enterprises?

Schafer: Vendors could do a better job at helping us do self-assessments and self-audits. We had a potential security breach after we had a new router added to our network. It went undetected for quite some time. Our large vendors could come in and give us more assistance on this type of thing.

FCIO: Have IT shops relinquished too much power over the network to users these days, by way of social networking sites or consumer devices used for work?

Schafer: If you look back 15 years ago, the same concern was raised about email. If you look back 10 years ago, the same thing was said about the Internet.  

Over the next five years, we're going to become much more flexible about social networking sites. Service agencies in West Virginia already have Facebook pages. In West Virginia, it is up to each cabinet secretary whether to allow employees access to social networking sites. They are open to 10 to 15 percent of employees, and I think we'll see that continue to grow.    

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