2008 InfoWorld CTO 25: Jim Burns, State of Alabama

Sometimes, you just have to be tough. Jim Burns may be soft-spoken and affable, but he also was determined to consolidate the State of Alabama’s more than 200 e-mail systems. Not long after Burns became CIO in 2006, the governor asked that an e-mail be sent to all state employees. It couldn’t be done. With several hundred separate systems spread across about 250 agencies, no common directory structure, and a half-dozen e-mail systems (including Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, and even Sendmail), there was no way to do it.

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Burns’ challenge was not unique to Alabama. State governments, he says, aren’t as monolithic as they might appear. Many agencies report to the governor, who can mandate standards, but numerous others are independent, reporting to boards created by the legislature, without gubernatorial control over their operations. That’s why only two other states — Michigan and South Dakota — have unified e-mail systems, he says.

About a third of the time, agencies were happy to give up the hassle of managing their own e-mail system — or go to the state after a little cajoling, Burns says. Another third became willing only after a major failure showed them they’d be better off letting Burns’ team handle it.

The rest — what he calls the “unyielding” — refused to give up control. This is where Burns had to be tough. One power he had was in approval of hardware and software, even for agencies that didn’t report to the governor. So he simply stopped approving all IT expenses for the “unyielding.” They ultimately fell in line.

There was also modifications within IT. He transferred to his team the best of the various agencies’ IT staffs and shifted many people’s duties. Most of those unwilling to change ultimately retired when put into new positions they did not want to take on. But many more IT staffers were happy to trade in maintenance jobs for more challenging assignments, Burns says. “We had great employees. They just needed focus,” he adds.

Before he joined the state, as a Computer Sciences Corp. employee, he had managed IT at Maxwell Air Force Base as a contractor. Maxwell is a teaching base for the military’s Air University, and each school had its own systems. That’s where he learned the art of mixing persuasion and authority to unify a highly siloed environment.

Consolidating e-mail systems is just the tip of the iceberg for Burns. He’s also standardized much of the state on a Microsoft-based infrastructure, from BizTalk to SharePoint, as well as reduced the variations in PCs and Windows versions. Consolidation and standardization are important for Alabama’s government, so it can spend its resources on efforts that actually help the state, Burns argues. Having a highly fractured environment just gets in the way of that, he says.

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The standardization effort has paved the way for the value Burns wants his team to focus on. He’s already created a unified Web site for all state children’s services, so citizens can go to one place to see what services they are eligible for, then get the contact information for each provider agency. State employees can now use mobile services through a choice of RIM BlackBerrys, Palm Treos and Windows Mobile devices; “there’s no way individual agencies can support this degree of effort,” he says.

In progress is an effort to let citizens apply for all benefits with one form at the site, rather than having to go to each provider’s separate site. Also in the planning stages are a new ERP system and VoIP telephony.

When he took the job, Burns saw the chaotic environment and did not shy away. “I knew that it had these problems. But it was so horrible that I had nowhere to go but up.” Three years later, “horrible” is a memory, but the momentum remains up.