In partnership with the NYS CIO Council and the NYS Office of the Chief Information Officer and Office for Technology (CIO/OFT), the Center for Technology in Government initiated a project to generate a set of recommendations for enterprise IT governance for NYS government. The recommendations in this report relate to the components of the enhanced enterprise IT governance structure and the implementation of those components, which were collaboratively developed with key stakeholders within NYS, including state and local government CIOs, state control agencies, and CIO/OFT. The project drew on insights gained within NYS, as well as IT governance experiences nationwide, lessons from the private sector, and frameworks developed in the academic literature. The project was divided into 4 phases:

The data to inform the prototype model was gathered through multiple methods: a review of the literature and current best practices, interviews, and facilitated workshops. Each phase of the project relied on different data gathering methods to engage different stakeholders in the model development process. The primary data collection events were a series of four workshops held with chief information officers and IT directors from state agencies and local governments between October 2008 and April 2009. The facilitated workshops ranged in attendance from approximately 20 to 30 participants. The first workshop was designed to provide a baseline understanding of the value proposition for enhancing enterprise IT governance in New York State and each successive workshop built upon the results of the previous one. Throughout the workshop timeline, additional information was gathered from the NYS stakeholder community via semi-structured interviews with participants in current IT governance, such as CIO/OFT, NYS budgetary and procurement agencies, and existing governance bodies (both formal and informal) already in operation within the state.

The final workshop provided the participants with an opportunity to review and comment on an early draft of the governance model. Following that final workshop, multiple draft versions of the recommendations were reviewed with the New York State CIO, CIO/OFT senior staff, the CIO Council Action Team Co-chairs, the CTG Standing Committee, and key stakeholders in the New York State Legislature to gather their insights regarding the recommendations and model with each new iteration of the model. Consistent with CTG’s approach the input received from these facilitated discussions were then incorporated into the final version of the recommendations and the report.

Following the completion of the workshop series, CTG was asked to facilitate the development of a new charter for the NYS CIO Council. Through weekly face-to-face meetings between March and May 2009, CTG staff worked with the CIO Council Action Team Co-Chairs to create a draft charter. These meetings also allowed the CTG team to take a deep dive into one of the critical governance bodies; the knowledge gained during that process directly influenced the model development. The draft charter as completed on May 20, 2009 is included in Appendix E of this document.

The current practice research for the project was conducted in two phases. The CTG team began with a review of literature in the academic and practitioner fields about enterprise IT governance in both the private and public sector. Web searches identified organizations, in the United States and internationally, (e.g., research centers, government agencies, consulting firms, etc.) with IT governance expertise. This phase relied heavily on the use of Internet search engines and keywords commonly used to describe IT governance. Sources during this phase included items such as journal articles, conference papers, books, case studies, white papers, and popular press articles.

The second phase consisted of an environmental scan of IT governance in the public sector. This phase began with Web site reviews of publicly available documents from thirteen U.S. states that were selected based on the following three criteria: (1) states with publicly available information about IT governance efforts posted on their Web Site; (2) states ranging in the total size of government (i.e., size of IT budget and IT workforce); and (3) states at various stages of IT governance implementation. The selected states were California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. Following the document analysis, the next segment of work was to conduct a series of semi-structured interviews with IT executives in eleven states: California, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, Oregon, South Dakota, and Tennessee. The results of this research are available in two documents: Enterprise IT Governance in State Government: State Profiles and Lessons Learned from the States.

Table B1. Environmental Scan: Overview of States
State	Phase 1: Structural Profiles	Phase 2: Interviews
California	X	X
Florida	X
Georgia	X
Indiana		X
Kansas	X	X
Kentucky	X	X
Maine	X
Michigan	X	X
Minnesota	X	X
Mississippi		X
New York	X	X
North Carolina	X
Oregon		X
Pennsylvania	X
South Dakota		X
Tennessee		X
Texas	X
Virginia	X