"Right now," says our source, "there's a lot of money going into Microsoft Project, and reams of paper, PowerPoint presentations and very expensive people working on this." To fund the initiative, IT dollars have been taken away from basic needs, such as coding and system administration, and long-term IT employees have been let go in favor of consultants who will ostensibly heal the funding pain.
The problem with working on a purely strategic, consulting-oriented plane (the "36,000-foot view," as the consultant buzzword has it) is that it's hard to get things done when resources are taken away from tactical areas. As our source says, "You've got to eventually land the plane and get it done without resources and without good people."
Worse, "Users can make requests, but if it's not deemed strategic, it's deemed contract outside of IT's duties. Then the users feel they're getting ignored." And when users feel ignored, that's the first step in an IT department's death spiral because, ultimately, IT is about business, and business is about making profits, and profits don't ever happen without filling the needs of real people.
Jonathan Feldman is chief technical manager of the Chatham County Government in Savannah, Ga., and a Network Computing contributing editor. Write to him at [email protected].
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