How State CIOs Collaborate Across Borders

By Kim Boatman

Increasingly, government agencies on the city and state levels are facing situations that require cross-boundary IT collaboration. Consider these real-life scenarios:

• A child is missing -- perhaps abducted across state lines -- and time is precious. In minutes, across a multi-state region, there are AMBER alerts flashing on freeway signs.
• In South Dakota, the state's only remaining Latin teacher relies on videoconferencing to educate students hundreds of miles away. 
• In Denver, a resident with a complaint about a pothole needn't wade through government listings in the phone book. He or she simply dials 311, and the 311 call center routes the call to the appropriate agency.

When successful, these collaborations can play a critical role in saving lives, as in the case of child abduction. They can mean innovative solutions, such as local school districts working together to enable a Latin teacher to reach students in remote regions. And they also can lead to a more streamlined, efficient use of government resources, as in the Denver 311 call center, which is expected to expand to include other municipalities in the region.

"Geography is becoming less and less important for a lot of people," says Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), an organization of state CIOs and IT executives and managers. "What we're going to see here is that inter-organizational, cross-boundary collaborations are not going to be just desirable, they're going to be necessary. The governance -- as opposed to the government -- is going to be very important."

And for state CIOs, it's not simply a matter of cooperating across borders, but of collaborating with government agencies at a number of levels and even, in some cases, working with private entities.

Perhaps surprisingly, the biggest challenges confronting CIOs when it comes to these collaborations have little to do with technology itself.

"It's all about people," says Otto Doll, South Dakota's CIO and co-chair of NASCIO's Cross-Boundary Collaboration Committee. "We in government primarily deal with people, and that's what it boils down to. There might be some challenges with technologies, but that really pales in comparison with figuring out how to collaborate with people who may have different motivations and perspectives than you have."

As a recent brief from Doll's committee explains, "In many instances, the technology that would enable the collaboration already exists; the challenge lies in bringing together all the stakeholders and determining a clear business case for collaboration.''

While IT collaborations are sometimes born out of urgent need, such as in a natural disaster, they usually warrant careful consideration and planning. Some essentials to consider include:

• Establishing trust Overcoming what might be an initial wariness between parties is perhaps the greatest challenge, says Doll. Government agencies might bring long-standing histories of friction and skepticism about collaboration to the process. "You've got to have that buy-in," says Robinson. Audits and assessments of the collaboration can help.
• Making a strong business case Following standard business practice, laying out a business case that includes a budget and weighs benefits and risks will help the parties involved see the value in the collaboration. It also gives a formal structure to the goals, cost and time involved.
• Understanding the political landscape Evaluating the potential political ramifications of cross-boundary collaboration is critical, say the experts. State or other government, CIOs often need to make a case for the collaboration to risk-averse elected officials. Some might resist what they see as yielding power or influence. Knowing how the players view each other can provide insight into whether IT collaboration will work.
• Determining the governance structure Robinson views establishing governance as a primary challenge. Knowing just how the involved agencies or parties will share the cost and responsibility is critical. Often, cross-boundary efforts involve establishing a body, with representatives from the invested agencies, to govern the collaboration. For instance, Robinson says, the Mountain Area Safety Task Force brings together local, state and federal government agencies, along with private companies and volunteer organizations, to coordinate responses in the wildfire-prone areas of San Bernardino and Riverside counties of southern California.
• Evaluating jurisdictional challenges and legal obstacles "Jurisdictional challenges are ones that always raise their heads," Robinson says. For example, he says, one state might raise an AMBER alert when a 17-year-old girl is missing, while a border state might have a statute that prohibits issuing AMBER alerts for children over 16 because of the incidence of runaways. In other cases, privacy laws might affect attempts to share information between agencies.

NASCIO recommends creating memorandums of understanding to help negotiate collaboration while dealing with privacy issues.

When done well, these cross-boundary collaborations enable states and other government bodies "to actually get something done you probably couldn't have gotten done on your own,'' says Doll. In South Dakota, where Doll is CIO, that means having every emergency responder in the state, including federal agencies, on the same communications system. It also means every high school student in the state will have a laptop, with the state coordinating IT support and training with school districts.

States really won't have a choice, says Robinson. He points to prescription drug abuse as one example. Monitoring abuse across state lines is a complex issue involving both the public and private sectors and dealing with privacy, as well. Abusers often collect prescriptions across state lines, counting on a lack of communication between a pair of states. If there's any hope in stemming the tide of prescription drug abuse, it comes in the form of collaborative IT efforts.

"To be successful in the future is going to require more cross-boundary collaboration. You can't necessarily do these things with a command and control mentality anymore,'' says Robinson.

Kim Boatman is a freelance business journalist in Silicon Valley, Calif. She spent more than 15 years reporting for the San Jose Mercury News.