Q&A: Missouri CIO Ross Talks Opportunities

With an IT budget of about $250 million and a number of ambitious projects in the works, the state of Missouri stands to offer a great deal of opportunity to the channel. Input categorizes the state as among the most balanced in general fiscal management and a leader in the advancements of technology -- proving a catalyst in the recovery of the state and local IT market.

Missouri chief information officer Dan Ross took time out from his busy schedule to correspond with GovernmentVAR senior editor Jill Aitoro about state IT priorities.

GovernmentVAR: What IT projects wrapped up in the last year?
Ross: A significant project for the State of Missouri was IT consolidation, combining the IT staff and resources from 14 departments under the umbrella of the Office of Administration Information Technology Services Division (ITSD). Mandated by Gov. [Matt] Blunt at the beginning of his term in January 2005, this was a huge undertaking to identify the budgets and staff, create service-level agreements with the respective agencies, and move both the human resources and financial reporting responsibilities to ITSD by June 1, 2006 -- the beginning of the FY '07 fiscal year. To date, IT consolidation has resulted in an estimated $2.7 million in hard-dollar savings and an additional $2.4 million in cost avoidance due to the reduction of duplication and waste.

GovernmentVAR: What IT projects have kicked off? What are the goals for these, and what made them top-line priorities?
Ross: Goals for all projects undertaken by ITSD are to provide improved technology services and solutions for the State of Missouri departments and agencies so they can effectively service their customers. Of course, what creates top-line priorities are where we can identify projects that result in cost savings and improved productivity.

IT consolidation allowed us to form a team of technical staff to plan and migrate all the state agency e-mail to an active directory system. By using our own existing IT staff across multiple agencies, it has provided us the opportunity to avoid approximately $1 million to date for additional software licenses and technical assistance.

Another key project was to address a Web content filtering solution to be used across state government. A multi-agency team researched and recommended a statewide contract for Web content filtering for the next three years with funding provided by a one-time grant. The resulting contract provides a substantial reduction in the cost per employee and increases the number of state employees who can now benefit from 8,050 to 40,000. With savings in just the first year of approximately $123,000, this initiative should also result in increased available bandwidth and a cost avoidance in the need to purchase additional network services.

In June, Missouri issued a request for proposal (RFP) for a managed converged voice, video and data network for state government. Optionally, offerers can also bid to provide disaster recovery and data storage via this RFP. Bid evaluations are ongoing with an award estimated in the December to March 2007 time frame.

NEXT: Solutions gaining momentum in state government.