Five implementation success factors emerged from the environmental scan and from conversations with the New York State stakeholders and key experts within the field. These are presented below to complement the recommendations and to support the goal of generating value for the state from successful implementation of an enhanced enterprise IT governance structure.

Acknowledge and build upon the formal and informal collaboration efforts occurring throughout the state government IT community.

Within New York State, there are many formal and informal collaborative efforts currently in place. As with the other states reviewed, these bodies perform a very important function outside the obvious components of an IT governance structure. These coordinating mechanisms, as described earlier, contribute to deliberation on policy, overseeing planning, creating standards, or coordinating stakeholders. These coordination mechanisms are both internal and external to the state IT office and exhibit structural, functional, and social integration capability.

While we believe that all four types of coordination mechanisms as described above are crucial to effective management and operations of IT in the state, our recommendations extend only to external committees and councils.

Recognize the critical role of the Executive Chamber in implementing and sustaining.

Practitioner and academic research about IT governance consistently emphasizes the importance of executive sponsorship and champions in both the public and private sectors. Our interviews with the states support the idea that executive support is crucial for effective IT governance implementation. Within New York State, the need for executive support is particularly salient given the nature of the federated bureaucratic structures within the state.

Formally adopt an incremental approach to the implementation strategy with respect to changes in enterprise IT governance. Adopt a continuous learning view.

Current research has shown that one of the reasons IT initiatives fail is because organizations try to do too much, too soon. It is better to have a vision and then an incremental approach to implementation. Many states have started with core components of their governance structure and then slowly started adding additional components as they made progress.

Articulate the value an enterprise IT governance perspective would have for New York State as a whole.

It is important that the value derived from an enterprise IT governance framework is understood not only within the IT sector, but also from the programmatic sectors. Within the workshops, participants spoke about how the individual government IT managers have pre-established management paradigms that guides their actions. However, an enterprise perspective requires a different way of managing an agency’s IT resources. The participants felt that executive leadership and influence, coupled with a clear expression of the value in enterprise IT governance, would mitigate resistance to changing management styles and ultimately support the state’s overall objective of providing greater services to the citizens of New York.

Establish a regular review of the performance of the enhanced enterprise IT governance structure.

Because of the dynamic nature of the political and economic environment in state government, as well as changing needs of the state, IT governance structures in all states reviewed have undergone relatively frequent changes. As one of the State CIOs said, “It seems that every six years, you have to overhaul your current system.” Establishing an evaluation mechanism for the new IT governance structure and regular periodic review will ensure that New York State’s IT governance structures will remain effective for the state’s needs in the years to come.