IT consolidation requires constant vigilance because the forces pushing decentralization are strong. This is one of the greatest lessons learned by state IT chiefs from Pennsylvania to Tennessee to Alabama, and they shared their experiences with colleagues at the National Association of State CIOs mid-year conference. Once you think you've got a system centralized, you'll find new mini systems cropping up in the void. 

Pennsylvania's record of IT consolidation efforts is long and ongoing, the state's CIO, George White, told his counterparts at the NASCIO conference in Washington, D.C., May 5. Efforts to compress the number of data centers date back to the early 1990s, when there were 17 centers within about a 5-mile radius, he said. Consolidation reaped significant savings, but before they knew it, the old centers started taking on a new life as server farms.

"Individual agencies built individual server farms, and now we're in the process of consolidating them. It's like déjà vu all over again," White said. "We're back in the same agencies we moved out of their own mainframe operations, and now we're going after their server farms."

It is vital to recognize the cultural forces behind the resistance to centralization, particularly when you're taking away something that an agency has considered its own for decades. "This is something agencies have had in place for 30 years or so, and they've become very emotionally attached," White said. "In many cases, [they feel that] if they can't see it and touch it, it can't be good."

Employees will go to considerable lengths to avoid giving up their control by simply stalling or pointing to red herrings such as security issues. "There's a lot of activity on the part of employees to thwart your efforts. There's a lot of passive aggressive behavior, a lot of thinking, 'we can wait this crew out,'" White said.

In Alabama, Jack Doane, director of the Information Services Division, has also found that agencies' impulse toward decentralization is hard to combat. As his team pursued consolidation, individuals in the agencies began deploying their own new servers.

"What they did is start firing up other servers. Now what we've done is started a consolidation of servers," he said. "You don't want to be in a cyclical process of constant consolidation. You want to get ahead of the curve."

One of Doane's big centralization challenges was to consolidate more than 50 different email systems throughout the state government. There were Exchange servers all over Alabama, and some agencies had several email servers in place.  When a new governor entered office in 2005 and tried to send an email out to all state employees, he discovered he couldn't do it. That's when things began to change.   

"In our state, you can't do something without the leverage from above," he said. "The governor wanted an efficient email system. It would not have happened without the governor. "

By decree of an executive order, the IT team had 18 months to consolidate the email systems. So far, they have switched over 45 different systems to a statewide system with most users onboard. To this day, however, there are hold-outs, including the Department of Transportation.

Dealing with users is the most challenging part of consolidation, Dan Lohrmann, chief technology officer for Michigan, said. Even when you have support from above--which is critical--communication with the rank and file is imperative.

"The people side is the hardest piece [of centralizing systems]," Lohrmann said, noting that what consolidation ultimately means is a change in the way people do business. "At the beginning it was tough love."  

The consolidation journey in Michigan has been a massive undertaking, encompassing mainframes, data warehouses, enterprise storage technology, IT staff, data centers, backup technologies and more. The state replaced 40 data centers with three, Lohrmann told his colleagues at the NASCIO conference.

To combat resistance, Pennsylvania's White told his colleagues, brush up on their diplomatic skills, and be sure to have a business case at the ready. CIOs should conduct assessments so they can show that better service can be provided at a lower cost.

"It's one thing to sit and argue from an emotional standpoint, but when you have the facts in front of you, it's somewhat difficult [for them] to argue with that," White said. "Your staff will get very emotionally charged as they start to meet resistance. You have to come in and bring everyone to the table."

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