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- Reengineering a City
-
- A key ingredient in the recipe for making technology work: the
threat to
- privatize.
-
-
- Three years ago, when John Carrow became Philadelphia's
first-ever chief
- information officer, the city's information systems and
services were as
- bankrupt as its treasury. Desktop computers in 45 departments
were two
- generations out of date. A number of large-scale technology
- projects--including a $3 million payroll, personnel and
pension
- implementation--had crashed and burned. The last place anyone
at City
- Hall turned to for help was from the technical staff at any of
a
- half-dozen municipal data centers.
-
- Carrow was brought in at cabinet-level rank as part of Mayor
Edward
- Rendell's plan to reengineer Philadelphia government. His
mission was
- more than responding to pressure to "do something about the
computers."
- The Rendell administration was banking on technology to have a
large
- role in pulling Philadelphia out of a decade of insolvency and
into an
- era of over-the-top services supported by a seamless network
of
- integrated data systems accessible to private citizens as well
as 7,000
- bureaucrats in 200 city buildings.
-
- Carrow started by developing a strategic plan for more than
$80 million
- in annual IT spending fragmented among individual program
budgets. Then,
- drawing off of a 16-year career at General Electric Corp., he
created a
- business-oriented Mayor's Office of Information Services to
implement
- the plan.
-
- For the IT staff, the direction was clear: Satisfy your
"customers" in
- other city departments, or else information services will be
outsourced.
- "At my first all-hands staff meeting, I said I was going to
operate the
- department as a business," Carrow recalls. "And if, as a
business, we
- can't satisfy our customers, we might as well turn the
business over to
- the private sector and let them run it."
-
- "He made us wake up and empowered us," says Liza Casey, GIS
program
- manager, who like other IT administrators was given
unprecedented
- authority for decisions aimed at standardizing hardware,
software and
- operations support.
-
- "In terms of culture change, you'd be hard-pressed to find a
place where
- more IT change had taken place in such a short time," says
Michael
- Masch, a former Philadelphia budget director who is now budget
director
- at the University of Pennsylvania.
-
- Taking advantage of an innovative Philadelphia revolving loan
fund known
- as the "Productivity Bank," which helps fund the upfront costs
of
- technology upgrades that will pay for themselves through
improved
- efficiency, Carrow forged partnerships with department heads
on
- long-term initiatives to improve services, reduce spending and
generate
- additional revenue. The Revenue Department, for example, used
$10
- million in Productivity Bank loans to modernize and integrate
its
- internal tax collection systems, including one $500,000
application that
- generated $9 million all by itself by identifying and
withholding wage
- taxes from individuals who work in the city but live in
surrounding
- suburbs.
-
- In law enforcement, the Productivity Bank invested more than
$30 million
- in IT projects such as mobile data terminals to speed up
police response
- time; photo imaging and fingerprint scanning; and a prisoner
tracking
- system that uses bar codes and photo wristbands.
-
- Joe Connovitch, president of the National Association of State
- Information Resource Executives and director of the
Pennsylvania Bureau
- of Automated Technology Management, says cities are starting
to look
- beyond their traditional "stovepipe" information systems
towards
- Philadelphia for "John Carrow-type possibilities" across the
entire
- enterprise of municipal administration. "They're looking for
people who
- understand how the breadth and depth of technology can be used
to
- improve government service," says Connovitch. "It takes a guy
like John
- Carrow to put it all together."
-
- By Marilyn J. Cohodas
- Steven M. Falk photograph
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