Public CIO - December 2008/January 2009 - (Page 14)

“People were working, not only harder and more hours, but with technologies and platforms that they had never worked with before.” Ken Theis, director, Michigan Department of Information Technology interviewed said bigger workloads are the greatest source of stress for their teams. Twenty-two percent cited the pace of new technology as the biggest stressor, followed by office politics at 18 percent. Workloads are not a new problem in the public sector. Government IT departments have been under pressure to maintain the status quo or cut back for some time and the bad economy doesn’t help. Data from the 2008 Public CIO Annual Reader Survey found that 68 percent of respondents saw either no change or a decrease in staffing levels, and 58 percent saw no change or a decreased budget. In October, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that at least 39 states faced budget shortfalls, while half of the states had already cut spending for fiscal 2009. With IT viewed as a major cost in government, CIOs and their workers — in virtually all government sectors — should expect to see further pressure to curtail IT budgets, along with a rise in worker-related stress. We Must Balance Our Budget If rising workloads and shrinking budgets contribute to stress, then San Francisco has had plenty of it. “I think we’re on our eighth consecutive year of budget shortfall,” said Chris Vein, CIO of San Francisco. “And San Francisco is a jurisdiction like many where we have to balance our budget. We can’t deficit spend; we can’t borrow. And the reason that the eight years becomes important is that by this time, you’ve done just about everything that you can that will not cause pain.” When the public leaders decide to reduce funding, IT is often at a disadvantage, Vein said, because the people in charge of the purse strings don’t always know how IT works. “Most policymakers’ eyes glaze over when you start talking about technology. They don’t understand it; they don’t have time to understand it,” he said. “So it becomes very difficult for them to understand when you say that budget cutting will have a negative impact and a far-reaching impact on the ability of an organization and municipality to meet the mission of providing services to their citizens.” Tough Choices In Michigan, IT workers have contended with a major consolidation initiative and budget trouble, according to Ken Theis, director of the state’s Department of Information Technology. The combination has added to workers’ woes. “Major budget challenges have occurred in the last five years,” he said. The consolidation involved phasing out jobs, and the remaining employees had to take on more work than they would’ve had otherwise. Childs’ motives may be debatable, but the threat posed by insider sabotage definitely isn’t. In 2007, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) released a report, Insider Security Threats: State CIOs Take Action Now! that suggested public scrutiny of government employees may reduce aggressive oversight and compliance regarding insider threats. The report cautioned CIOs about IT experts within state IT departments who have a hacker mentality. “This person is perhaps the most dangerous of all due to his or her expertise and resulting ability to exact a significant amount of damage which could garner unfavorable headlines,” the report said. Although the NASCIO paper doesn’t detail the underlying causes, it does show insider attacks are rising rapidly. These findings mirror a 2006 survey conducted by the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a federally funded research and development center for Internet security expertise, which found that 68 percent of cyberattacks originated from within an organization. Stress could be one factor behind the rise in internal attacks. In October 2008, Robert Half Technology surveyed IT organizations and found workers are not only accomplishing more with fewer resources these days, but the cutbacks are taking a toll. Thirty-six percent of CIOs [14]

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public CIO - December 2008/January 2009

Public CIO - December 2008/January 2009 Contents Contributors Introduction Tense Times Insider Threat Twenty and Counting Labor of Love Putting Process Into Play Crossover Appeal FastGov CIO Central Security Adviser CIOs Pluck BlackBerry Phones From the Field Straight Talk

Public CIO - December 2008/January 2009

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