State governments traditionally housed multiple, independent IT operations among their myriad agencies and departments, making them ripe test beds for IT consolidation. At the same time, state business is often run by political appointees or entrenched bureaucrats, and both groups can be resistant to change that reduces their control or autonomy. At a conference of the National Association of State CIOs May 5, IT chiefs shared tips for consolidation by going after the low-hanging fruit first and saving the tough resistance for last.

For about six years in a row, Ohio contemplated consolidating its 29 separate email systems, which was going to be an $18 million project if done as a forklift upgrade, said Stuart Davis, CIO for Ohio. Eventually, Davis' group decided to take a more measured approach, starting with offices that were likely to show the least resistance and demonstrate success most quickly. 

"We kind of took a step back and looked at things differently. We looked at how we could engage with certain agencies that might be early adopters," he said. "Most of the [29] platforms were in place for a long time. There's a lot of religion in some of those spaces."

In the case of Ohio, the place to start email consolidation was at the cabinet level and the offices of elected boards and commissions. While this may not be where every IT chief would want to test out a new consolidation initiative, it worked for Ohio because the administration was very supportive of the effort. What's more, Davis had the advantage of support for consolidation within a budget document.

In Tennessee, CIO Mark Bengel had no budget guidance or legislative mandate for much-needed IT consolidation, unfortunately. He had a green light from the governor's office, but the support was contingent on feathers not getting overly ruffled. "I could do it, but I had to do it carefully," he said.

Bengel chose to avoid a mass-centralization initiative across the board, and instead pursued a more gradual approach, taking advantage of virtualization to centralize infrastructure. To avoid stirring up turf battles, Bengel and his team gave agencies latitude in running their own services, but they had to run them on centralized infrastructure. When agencies deployed new systems, they had to deploy them using the consolidated data center. The measured approach reduced some of the negative attitude that may have been expressed otherwise.

"Politically I think a lot of them looked at it as, 'oh I don't have to deal with this now,' so I didn't get as much pushback and fight," he said. "We keep the pressure consistent, but never too strong."

Like Davis in Ohio, Bengel looked to early adopters to initiate the project, and only after the technology had proven its success did he move on to the hold-outs. So far, he has been able to reduce his budget by 1 percent and reduce his staffing by 16 percent by implementing virtualization technologies, centralized storage and centralized back-up.

"We started with a coalition of the willing and left the people who really fought to the end. We waited until we had everyone in except for [the Department of Transportation]," Bengel said. "We showed them the savings. We had the metrics."

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