Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart: Thank you Allan and congratulations on being the new Chair of the Board. I'm delighted to be here today and to be able to share with you a document that I think by now many of you know better than even I do. I certainly want to allow enough time for questions you might have as well. So, what I'm going to be doing this morning for the first part is to really go through the highlights of the New York State Enterprise Strategic Plan, which was really a collaborative effort that many of you were involved in. So, we thank you for all of the contributions, all of the feedback, the input and the effort that we continue to do.

As you know this was certainly a big undertaking, but we wanted it to be a very inclusive process. So, for the first time, we engaged our vendors, we engaged members of the Chamber, we had various technology experts, academic partners so more would continue to move forward with the strategic plan that represented the New York State Enterprise.

As a collective group we all have a challenge to ensure that New York State stays at the forefront in terms of the usage of technology to provide better governing services, and certainly, a lot of the efforts have been done in partnership with the forum, with other various groups and constituent groups that we serve. We want to continue to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to provide input into that process.

The strategic plan is nothing more than a tool to bring focus in terms of what's important? What perhaps during this particular plan horizon is not important? Who needs to be involved and what is it that we want to achieve? So, we tried to develop a joint future state in terms of, as an enterprise, where New York State wants to go. And many of us are here as providers, we're here as customers, or we're also here as tax payers.

So, the other side that we have to be ever calmest in is what are we doing to ensure that we return a good value for the significant investment that we make in technology every year? So, what I'm going to be doing is taking you through that and I want to allow enough time at the end of this to address any questions that you might have. And answers that I don't have we will be sure to get them back to you.

Also I have a couple of members on my senior team here so if I don't know the answer, we will certainly refer to one of them. I have Daniel Healy, my WCIO man. You can stand up, for those who perhaps don't know who Dan is.

We also have Rico Singleton here, who is over all governance and strategy and certainly is the top person that I look to, to assure that we effectively implement our strategic plan. So, I want the emphasis on the word "ours" because we are looking to you as partners with us to ensure that we can be successful.

So, with that, what I'd like to cover is to do a little bit of a walk through of that plan and talk a little bit about the perspective and where we are going with it. Why is it an important document for us? As I said before, it is nothing more than a tool. It is a tool that continues to evolve. So, instead of it being a plan that is somewhat 'static,' we want it to be a 'dynamic plan.'

Our goal is to have updates to that plan on a regular basis and to share with you the package that we are making and implementing that plan. So, in order to do that, I'm going to talk a little bit about what the strategic direction is in challenging times.

We go through business drivers now we're all facing, to ensure that our plans start to address those drivers that we are faced with every day. Building a firm foundation with those overall goals, the over arching goals and putting those strategies to address each.

We'll talk a little bit about how we organize ourselves. Governess is a very hot topic. Governess is a topic that's being addressed by all of the State CIOs at this time, and I believe most of you are aware of the hearings that also took place last week. Well, we're continuing to look at that if State in fact is with the Assembly as well.

We want to talk about how well we are structuring ourselves, organizing ourselves to get the work done, but to get the work done more effectively and certainly more cost efficiently towards these tough challenging times.

Then, what are we doing to measure our impact, and to measure our results? What are the investments that New York State makes each year? I wish where depending on who is doing the counting between two, three billion dollars a year, how do we demonstrate that value? What are we doing by leveraging that technology that shows we're providing better services to our constituents?

So, how will we continue to hold ourselves accountable in terms of the results that are achieved? And finally, I want to talk about the continuing challenges and where we will be going with the other two and we'll be going into more of that.

If you start with those challenges that we have there... I'm not going to go over each of them because you've heard it many, many times so this won't be new information to any of you.

During this tough economic times we are all challenged, whether it is in the positive setting or in the public setting, to be able to apply or invest in technology in a more cost efficient way. As we look at the weak economy, hopefully we didn't bottom out... we haven't. We also know that the challenge is that we can have the opportunity from a technology perspective is the weak economy.

During those tough challenging times, it is technology that certainly can be a major driver in helping to provide more cost efficient operations to transform organizations and to help organizations even achieve higher levels of performance. So certainly, as technology for professionals, we can play a critical role in adding value during these tough challenging times.

Another challenge that we have, of course, is the IT workforce. As our baby boomers continue to retire how are we going to effectively replace those skills and talents?

I was at a meeting yesterday evening in New York City with a group of CIOs, most of who come from the private sector, and they are faced with the same challenge. The discussion drew around the "Xers," the "Millennials" that you heard about, and the challenges that they even have.

We have to create a work environment that entices them and makes it attractive because we need to recruit and retain them. It's still a challenge with our IT workforce.

As many of you know we have mentioned this in the past, a third of our IT professionals are eligible to retire in the next four years. A third of them plan to retire in the next four years.

The challenge is how do we continue to have an innovative and talented workforce that continues to deploy and implement the newer technologies that you and I want to apply? So, that continues to be a challenge.

Also, if you look at the strategic plan, and you've seen our winter updates that we posted the last couple of years, we've talked about these major projects that are on the table or under way or planned. And those equate to about three billion dollars over most of the pet projects, of just projects that are $10 million or more.

Someone has to effectively implement, manage, maintain and upgrade them. So, the workforce as well as replacing obsolete or antiquated legacy systems, becomes a dual challenge that we all need to collaborate on to ensure that we are successful at it.

And then the last one that I wanted to really talk about is cultural transformation. As we continue to move forward, to take a more inclusive approach in not only developing our workforce, examining newer technologies but embracing those technologies, we also need to be willing to ask ourselves each and every day, "To what degree am I going to change in order to make this work? To what degree can I contribute to be a part of that?" And so some of the cultural barriers that we have in the past, where we reach a comfort level, we have to continue to become comfortable with the uncomfortable, because that's what change is all about.

So, as we implement technology as you well know, it's normally not the technology that becomes the critical success factor for a project. It's really the cultural change and the response of the people that are going to be impacted by the application of that technology. So, we do not want to discount the importance of change and managing that change, and taking organization through the change as a result of the work that you're doing.

And so transformational actions will create a debt of unrest, fear, resistance, but also adoption, embracement, excitement, fun, and challenging and taking risk. And that's what we hope that you'll get out of this today. Is that we are in this together to start and continue on this journey, that you've heard me mention before, to take real life and jump powers and learn from that degree.

Given that, David Paterson has talked about the new innovation and digital economy. And it is great that he has had a focus on this and has been going around the state talking about the importance of technology to build a stronger economy going forward. And in our strategic plan, he is an executive sponsor of that plan because technology is one of the key components to us building a stronger economy and ensuring that we can achieve and sustain our global competitiveness as a state and government [inaudible 0:11:28].

In the past year, one of the major roles of my job, as chief information officer for the state, is to lead this strategic direction which is the plan. But, in addition to that, we also have worked very hard in the past year to bring more information to you, to be more transparent. So, not only do we have the strategic plan available, but we also worked on a plan for broadband. We also put in place our first New York state year in review, which actually we launched at the Forum meeting at the beginning of this year. In addition to that, we continue to pull together information that we hope you're interested in looking at.

So, for instance, this year as we started 2009, we did not know that there would be a Stimulus Act. So, the Broadband Stimulus Program has been an activity that we have been very much involved in and many of you have participated in that. And I will touch on that a little later. But, we now issue a broadband weekly flash bulletin that gives you an idea of what's going on around broadband. In addition to that, we just launched two weeks ago, our MWBE in fill newsletter. The MWBE newsletter is possible because of the partnership that we have with many of our core public partners in our state agencies, making a difference in the improving NWBE participation.

We named it the infielder, because why should it [inaudible 0:13:15] because the whole point when we launched our first jump start event in Albany was to create a level playing field like Governor Paterson said in that particular event.

So, this level playing field, we felt that it is better to be in the infield than the outfield so that is where the Infielder came from. But, we are very happy with that because in that we have an opportunity to not only provide score cards but to also high success stories of what is actually being done. So, we are going to continue and try and provide more information. If there are additional things that you think we should provide, please let us know. Go to our website; those are available.

So, let's get to the plan. If you think about the strategic plan, there were some guiding principles that we put at the very beginning of the plan. Now, these valuable principles are to guide our decision making. A strategic plan is nothing more than what decisions need to be made so that the right resources are brought to bare to implement technology. So, if you look at these, my goal is not to go over all of them because they are in the plan and you can read them.

We want to emphasize the notion around the customer. A lot of times in technology, as an IT professional, we develop and implement systems as though we are the customer. What we have to focus in terms of who is the ultimate user? You start to rethink how the application or the system should work. So, this starts with the customer and we will continue to push have you asked the customers what they need, what they want. Sometimes the customer may be our own staff, but sometimes it may be a different group.

So, we want to make sure that what we supply is customer centered. If you look at some of our websites, are they customer centered? I think we have some opportunities to improve there. And so NY.gov is a particular one that is of interest to us and one that we will continue to look out.

There are certainly tools and applications and content managing tools that allow it to be more customer friendly, more user friendly. Navigate, to get through and have access to all of the critical information that our tax payers look for. So, those are opportunities starting from the customers view to continue to have the customers view in mind.

Another thing that we wanted to continue to hear, to continue to expand the use of share services. During these tough economic times, as we continue to be more cost efficient that can only come as a result of the economies of scale.

So, the office of tax payer's accountability that Governor Paterson announced several months ago that is headed up by Valerie Gray [inaudible 0:16:31] is really geared towards expanding the use of share services. Share services is an idea that has been around in the private sector for quite some time and allows you to be more efficient and of course the goal is to deliver better government services at a lower cost.

Instead this impact reduces the cost from the tax payer's perspective.

CIO/OFT or the office of technology was created as a 19 share services organization. So, you will continue to see us look at when we are going to achieve greater economies of scale of the process state enterprise, while at the same time allowing the flexibility that needs to occur for those missing critical applications.

Another critical guiding principle and it all sort of come together in terms of being transparent and being accountable and showing the results of those investments.

Now, with that, this is also a little bit busy. But, I want to reemphasize that there are four overarching goals in the Paterson administration.

Certainly, under each of those goals, there is not all the strategies, but what I consider to be the major ones that we're going to focus on in terms of priority and impact.

So, I tried to give you those four overarching goals, and then some of those high-impact high-return strategies that we will be pursuing, that are in alignment with the plan.

Building a new innovation in digital economy, you've heard Doctor Paterson talk about that many times. If you look at our documents, we have classified and then organized those documents to talk about... What is technology doing to contribute to achieving that particular goal?

With loosened state spending, I will spend a lot of time on that. But, what are the strategies from a technology perceptive that we're doing to contribute to achieving that particular goal?

The next goal certainly is protect the disenfranchised populations. How can technology contribute to that goal? What are we doing to contribute to that goal? What are you doing to contribute to that goal?

And lastly, educating our IT workforce - which certainly is one of those that we think about every day, and that keeps us up at night, that I just talked about. What will we do for our future leaders? How do we develop our future IT leaders, as well as our future IT professionals?

And there's a lot of activity going on around that now. And quite a bit of collaborative work that's going on.

That's just a snapshot under each of those in terms of those four overarching goals. What are we doing from a technology perspective to contribute to impact or to add value?

If you look at those four overarching goals, and you look at the strategic plan... The strategic plan talks about future capabilities within the need for our systems to continue.

Now, this enterprise plan does not try to replace individual technology plans of agencies. So, if Adam has a plan - and he does very well with the OME - this plan does not replace that plan, but they should be complementary and supplementary to each other. They complement each other.

So, the expectation as the state CIO is that every agency will have their own technology plan. But, that technology plan should be developed within the context of the overall enterprise plan. So, this plan does not take the plan of that.

But, the agency plan should be supplemental to the overarching enterprise plan.

Now, in order for that to occur, what we did in the plan was to introduce the concept of the IT strategic clusters in the strategic plan. There has been a strategic cluster that has been operating. For instance, for criminal justice, for some time...

We've had a group of our CIOs from Health and Human Services starting to come together. And I call it "the brotherhood," coming together to start joint planning. Joint collaborating. Coming up with ideas as to... How can we work together? Because we have... we layer services. We service the same group of constituents.

So, doesn't it make sense that we have this natural grouping that comes together? So, in our strategic plan, we talk about these IT strategic clusters. Now, as I said at GTC, there is not a "one for one" correspondence between how the governor's office and the governor's secretary treats deputy secretaries.

Each deputy secretary is responsible for a portfolio of agencies. However, in some cases, for instance, in Health and Human Services, the Health and Human Services agencies may span more than one deputy secretary.

So, it isn't as though one IT cluster is matched with one deputy secretary. What we tried to do here was take natural technology clusters that would span administrations or organizational changes, to say, when you're looking at procuring future technology or you're looking at data integration or data sharing, what agencies logically come together because they have kind of information or data needs.

So, we settled on this rubric of seven strategic clusters. Now, this becomes critical because all that we will start to do and to look at will be, "What's the cluster doing? How's the cluster working?" And those clusters, we expect, and we will be meeting with each, will have a charter, will have a governance, and we will be looking at how are you adding value through stronger, closer collaboration for future application needs.

Now, there are going to be times when those needs may be just unique to that agency. But, within the cluster, we know that there are opportunities for joint development, joint procurement, because while at the same time we want to continue advancing applications, we also want to take advantage of opportunities to drive the cost down.

And now, in terms of cost, our motto and strategic plan is the total cost of ownership. Not just procurement costs, not just implementation costs, but the long term costs as well, those ongoing costs.

So, the TCO motto is an integral component of that plan. So, these obviously are several clusters that we'll be looking to. Now, in addition to those clusters that are focusing on mission critical applications to advance the missions of those respective agencies, underlying that it is an enterprise infrastructure.

And it is at that level that we want to ensure that we are achieving, or I should say maximizing, economies of scale. We want the enterprise infrastructure to certainly be reliable, efficient, dependable, and we also want to assure that we're doing it at the lowest cost.

So, with that, if you think about the strategic clusters that are really the individual agency coming together as a group to say we're going to collaborate, we're going to do training programs together, we're going to procure applications together.

There's also that underlying piece that says and we still operate within a larger enterprise. So, in the strategic plan there is a conceptual framework that's got a three tier model. And this three tier model is really to look at how will we continue to deliver technology.

The service delivery model, but also, embedded, implied in that model, even though it looks almost simplistic, implied in that is that there is a governing structure that operates up and down every level.

So, let me sort of take you through that. At the bottom tier is what we call the infrastructure level. That's the enterprise infrastructure level that I was just talking about where you have shared surfaces.

If you look at the right side, it talks about the ownership from an agency perspective. If you look at the... right, left, right. [laughs] You look at CIO/OFT. So, in terms of who's mainly responsible, who takes ownership for procuring it, for operating it, for training users on how to use it.

So, if you start at the very bottom level, tier one is the infrastructure level. At that level we're saying that the CIO/OFT takes on its highest level of ownership at the tier one level. So, as you can see, it's high and then it becomes a lot lower. The agency's ownership is at the lowest level at the tier one level because you're talking about enterprise applications that are installed, operated, managed, and maintained from an IT share services perspective.

As you move up to tier two, that's where your IT strategic or mission critical applications come into play. Now, in that regard, we look to the agencies to come together to say from the agency perspective "here's a mission critical application that we need. But, we also know there are several other agencies that need it." Now, part of the job that we will do at CIO/OFT through the planning to procure process and the annual technology planning classes, PTPs and ATPs, we'll also be looking for those opportunities for collaboration. When we see those opportunities for collaboration, they can be at the tier one level or at the tier two level, but you will also continue to see that as well.

So, when we talk about enterprise solutions, enterprise applications, it's with the thought in mind of further integration at the cluster level, and in some cases there may be needs that span more than one cluster. If you have more than one cluster involved, or two clusters or three clusters, then you are also looking at enterprise solutions, but you're also driving integration, and you're driving down your cost for procuring that application as well. So, you're trying to leverage common needs and common goals within a cluster, and across clusters when it makes sense.

Now, if you are the lead agency that's driving that... so, for instance, let's take the division of the budget and OSC that are involved in an integrated financial management system right now. Those are the two lead agencies that are part of the financial cluster. They are driving, and so the expectation is that they will own that application. So, in terms of the management of it, the training of it, the upgrading of it, the implementation of it... Then their management, the contract management perspective of it will be under the purview of the lead agency or the owner of that particular application.

As you continue moving up to the third tier, you have those niche applications that are just appropriate for just an agency. No one else is interested in using it, don't need it, but it's something we need that is critical to the mission of what we do. In that regard, they are pretty self-sustaining unless they need to be on the enterprise network. If at that time they need to be on the enterprise network, then you would follow all the regular protocol and standards to be connected to the network.

So, this particular conceptual framework also draws governance from the decision making perspective. What we need to do to operationalize it is to go back and review all of our policies to ensure that they are aligned with implementing this particular three tier approach.

Now, in addition to that, as I said before, this three tier approach then starts to drive different IT governance. How many of you were in the hearing last week on IT governance? I'm just trying to see how much I can abbreviate this part. Put your hands up again. Oh, quite a few. Well, I won't spend a lot of time on this, but we'll have time for questions afterwards.

In this structure that we put into the strategic plan, did want to speak to it a bit about having a structure in place that speaks not only to the strategic initiatives, tactical as well as operational.

Even with the strategic plan, you know that the horizon level plan is assessable in saying, "We're putting a plan in place for five years and we won't be making any change to it over five years because things change so rapidly."

So we wanted to have a model that was flexible, dynamic, and at the same time organizing. And the governess is again a tool for organizing resources and for making better decision making.

So, at the very top, we'll have an IT executive council, strategic council. This council will consist of agency heads at the strategic level and the key decision makers that will drive the conditions of the agencies.

In addition to that, what we're doing is adding members from the legislature, members from the broader technology community, and academic partners, so that we're getting a global perspective from a strategic level.

Because one of the challenges that we must continue to address and improve upon is continuing to educate our agency heads on how technology can help people more successful in advancing what they do.

So, this is not a technology discussion than it is a strategic business discussion that will take place at that level. And that group will also be responsible for providing strategic oversight or implementing the strategic plan.

Now, as you continue to move forward we will have a smaller tactical group where from time to time we are hit with a particular critical problem that we need to address right away.

So, we want to have the ability to bring together or to disband quickly "SWAT teams" to focus on a particular concern that we need to face right now. Where we need to mobilize resources, when you think about it, you want to be very agile.

We need to be very nimble. We don't have a lot of time to think about all these nuances where we want to engage a quick level of... bring together some experts on a very short focused time frame and then to be able to disband. So that's really the purpose of that.

Then moving over to the right we have our newly, reconstructed CIO Council. The CIO Council was implemented some six or seven years ago under the first-year CIO and the group came together to bring the agencies CIO together in a CIO peer community.

As most of you know by now that we have now transitioned into the new and improved CIO Council which is a group that is made up to focus on standards, policies, operational implementations, issues of women... Well, why don't we just go with that?

Where we have a new leadership. So, for the first time, the state CIO is not chairing the CIO Council or a deputy. We are operating under a new charter that was done in collaboration as a result of input also analysis and study that was done by the Center for Technology in Government.

I have some [inaudible 34:51] about being there as part of doing that as a group and we developed a first time charter for this CIO/OFT Council. The result was to have a CIO Council under the new charter that is posted, where the CIO Council was designed for CIOs which was lead by the CIOs. So, as a result of that, this new charter that focuses on what their new roles will be, we are now operating under. And one of the critical pieces was new leadership of that group.

So, operating under the authority of the state CIO is the new CIO Council. Now, that CIO Council held elections for the leaders of that. CIO/OFT facilitated that process, but now we are happy to turn the reigns over and I saw Nancy's face somewhere... Where is Nancy? Oh, she's way in the back. We have a new Chair, and a new Vice Chair, so this is our opportunity to publicly congratulate Nancy and Adam, so please stand Nancy and Adam.

[applause]

Dr. Mayberry-Stewart: Nancy, you won't be able to stay at the back for the next meetings here, but in terms of this new role, moving forward, we have the broader CIO Council and then you have the CIO leadership role. We're really going to be looking to that leadership role to advise the state CIO strategies, new emission tips. So, we're in this together. This is a partnership but we're looking to that leadership role to try change, to help rebuild champions, to help us deal with those cultural barriers that I was talking about, to ensure that New York State stays at the forefront from the technology perspective.

If you look at our rankings that we talked about in our plan 2010, where are we [inaudible 0:37:10]. For instance, where are we in terms this will fit? Where are we in terms of a new digital economy? Where are we on broadband rankings? Where are we on the use of [inaudible 0:37:21] government expansion on our websites?

We're looking to that group to help develop those standards, architecture, come up with the policies and advise us. But, we also want that group to move swiftly but prudent. So, it is an inclusive, collaborative and we are thrilled to continue moving forward with that and so our goal, even with this CIO Council, we have also added members from the academic community. For instance, we have Harley Campbell. Those of you who attended the CIO Academy, Harley is the Executive Director of the CIO Leadership Institute. So, we want to infuse this group to not only focus on the application of technology, but also to focus on the professional development.

So, this is continuing to develop our CIO group and those CIOs that are inclined to come behind us. So, it's for their personal, professional development, applying technology and at the same time sharing best practices. When that occurs, and you get those kinds of synergies going [inaudible 0:38:34] of the whole New York State.

Finally, getting near the end as we measure our impact, I talked about the forums management. Coming up with the enterprise performance, one of the things that we want to measure - measurements are only indicators of this thing. They may change. The challenge is always in our measuring the right things.

If you haven't been measuring them in the past the other challenge is how to start to capture that information. But, as part of being transparent, and being accountable, we want to be able to start to measure and post the score card that will look at these particular measurements as they relate to those four over arching goals. So, we are hoping to do that.

Now, one of the things that many of you may have received an email from Michael Jobsvay who will be coming to this room in a future meeting to talk about the in depth MWBE meetings. Michael is moving forward with the MWBE performance score card as well, so obviously we work very close with him. He will be presenting it at a future meeting.

So, you will start to see an emphasis around the forums management being very transparent coming out of the Governor's office as well. The Governor's secretary Valarie Bray, the Director of State Operations are very interested and are challenging all of us to continue looking at the forums management, looking at results being palpable for those and using it to just improve what we feel is part of our own continuous improvement. Those are the things that we will be measuring at.

When I talk about the weak constructive broadband governments, I also wanted to touch upon one other component of the governments. Now, we will have the IT executive council, the CIO Council [inaudible 0:40:40]. But another one that we also announced this summer was the reconstructed broadband Governor's Council. Governor Pat has issued Executive Order 22 to talk about... I really have so many slides in the last couple of days [inaudible 0:41:05] apologize.

We are now sending Executive Order 22, the New York State Broadband Development and Deployment Council. As many of you may know, in December of 2007, we established the first broadband council. The executive order reduced the size of that council, but it also gave it an additional... I mean institutionalized with the EEO 22. This allows us to...

[long pause 0:41:46]

Dr. Mayberry-Stewart: Anyway, Executive 22 allows us to have a group in place that will oversee the broadband stimulus projects as well. So, in addition to the broadband strategy that we put out there, this group will also oversee those projects that we are waiting to hear about those awards, which we were told now probably will not be announced until next month. So, there's a lot of work and many of you are involved in it. We also have that group that will be put together and there will be representatives from public, as well as private partners serving on them.

So, with that, our 2010 strategic emission tips are one goal for all of those because they're attached to it most. But, if you just look at OTA as we know, continue to drive operational efficiencies, Executive order 22 that we will be implementing, certainly implementing our strategic plan will be our focus and ensuring that our plan to procure annual technology plans that our policies are all in line with the strategic plan. That enables us to be successful [inaudible 0:43:03].

We will continue to look to the agencies to modernize their latest systems and to drive efficiencies across a cluster or between clusters whenever that makes sense. Obviously, one of the things that we want to focus on is to ensure that we have a best practice [inaudible 0:43:28] for this model in place. That model always continues to evolve; we have to evaluate it, what's working, what isn't working. What's practical, what's not effective. And we also look to this group to provide feedback on that as well.

And then finally our workforce is going to continue to be our challenge, we are in discussions working with our civil service, ELV, the Governor's office. So, look at new strategies to develop a stronger workforce.

So with that, we do some state spending, you can start being to make this available to you in that regard, the Office of Taxpayer Accountability. If you haven't read about that when the governor announced it earlier this year, and the role that they had been doing.

Their focus has been technology. Technology is very essential and integral to accomplishing the goals of that. Broadband strategy that I talked about... Certainly, if you haven't had an opportunity to look at where we are with that regard, I hope that you'll go look at that.

And the governance piece of the executive order 22. That talks about it, who is represented on that consult, and what their goal will be. It also includes a mandate to complete a mapping, a broadband mapping, so that we're able to determine where we still have gaps in under-served rural and urban communities. So that's also included in that.

The broadband council, as I mentioned before, will have now 13 members. We had a lot larger group than the past. And it'll also be organized along four technologies "committees," and we will have representation from public and private partners.

With those, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on, but the broadband stimulus... maximizing funds coming to the state. Governor Paterson has submitted a letter of recommendations on projects that were submitted for broadband to NTI, [inaudible 0:45:39] and Roost, the federal agencies that are overseeing the broadband stimulus program.

And we're asking for a little under one billion in grants representing 74 projects, and many of these projects are historical partnerships, public-private partnerships that came together. And so, if you're interested in knowing those projects... what was included... that's posted on our broadband stimulus website. So if you want to go to the www.nysbroadband.ny.gov, you'll see the information there as well.

With that, I'm going to start to back up. I think most of you know, we implemented Empire 2.0, which is our social networking initiative. And the individual that was most involved in creating that and setting that up is Rico here. But, we're using that to continue to be more transparent, to engage this tool, whether it's putting up Wikis to get ideas about new policies or things that you think we should be doing, or if it's just to continue to collaborate and extend the conversations to other experts out there.

So, we're having a lot of fun with Empire 2.0, and we're continuing to encourage all of our other agencies to adopt these tools, to provide policies in place, to be at the forefront of that. I won't go into all of those, because I want to leave enough time.

There's one other piece, a strategy that will continue to be important, and will take a greater importance as we go forward. As you know, we issued a report, called for a strategy for openness.

Open government certainly is one of our strategic goals. And as we think about that, to what degree will New York State continue to look at open source, open documents, working with our partners at the New York State Archivists, the AG's office. As we continue to explore what's going on out there in the industry, and how will that impact us, or how can we take advantage of these newer technologies and new strategies?

We certainly owe it to ourselves to make sure that we are knowledgeable about that and that we are putting the right plans and strategies and the right thinking is in place to talk about where does it have the right fit in terms of New York State. And where there are opportunities to use newer technologies, or to move forward in terms of open government. Government as has been announced by the White House within the last couple of weeks.

What's New York State doing to also be a major player in that arena? So, you will continue to hear more about that.

And we are planning a summit in the first quarter of next year in partnership with our state archivers to talk about those particular challenges. So, we're on the lookout for that announcement.

Before the government, I am going continue moving. MWBE has been talked about and of course it is a critical strategy of CIO/OFT. It is a critical strategy of the Governor; it is a priority in this administration. And we would not be near the success that we have achieved in the last year and a half without all of the corporate partners, many of which are members of the New York City round table. So, we want to thank each of you that have stepped up voluntarily to help us achieve our 20 percent goal by the year 2010. So for that we owe you a big thank you and a [inaudible 0:49:40.

[applause]

Dr. Mayberry-Stewart: With that there is one last piece that I want to talk about, our goals. As a result of our annual technology plan and our addendum that we asked each of the agencies and we called about eight or nine agencies. We started looking at information about the future. When we think of our future we need to talk about what does our workforce look like today and what does it need to look like. So, in our strategic plan, where we talk about bringing in the government application. Webcam, GIS, you name it, these newer technologies, we need to have a workforce we need to have. This continues to show our challenge.

That for these 56,000 IT professional that we are aware of across the state agencies, about 40 percent of them are still more heavily dedicated to [inaudible 0:50:55]. Our challenge is to continue to retool, retrain, and recruit the newer skills. Now, why am I talking about that?

Everyone knows that as we look at reducing cost, we have to put it out on the table. The use of consultants for a staff augmentation gets a little bit of attention every now and then. Our use of consultants for projects, we certainly know that we cannot [inaudible 0:51:35] these projects if we don't have the right skills. So we need consultants.

But, as we continue to challenge ourselves and we know where your staff is spending their time we have to continue to migrate from the older technologies to the new. Or our over reliance and I want to emphasize over reliance on consultants will continue to be high.

So, we are continuing to look at training, retooling, retraining a very dedicated work force to be able to rapidly develop new applications that we are solely in need of that you, the vendors in the room, sell to us. But, our ability to absorb those newer technologies from those New York changes, but our ability to absorb those technologies and are going to rub against a cultural impossibility because we just can't work up our training work fast enough to adopt the newer technologies.

So, that's where creativity of working together in partnerships are going to become extremely important as we try to continue the development of innovative and talent workforce. As we want to continue to bring in the Millennials that want to work with technology, many of which do not want to be a manager, they just want to be able to do app applications. So this is a challenge. But, to give you a feel for that, we know [inaudible 0:53:36] we are.

So, as we come back to plan 2010 that we introduced in 2007, when I first came here, we laid out overarching goals and strategies that we wanted to accomplish by 2010. It is still posted on our website. I encourage you to go look at it. Let me know how we are doing, where we are advancing, where we are moving forward. If there are those areas that you feel we are not moving as fast as we could. I hope you have suggestions as to how we might be able to pick up the pace. But certainly, the changes that we are making, could not be done without the collaborative partnership that we have had. [inaudible 0:54:24]. And certainly with the agencies, the agency CIOs as we continue to move forward together. This is a journey. So, thank you very much for this time this morning as we continue to [inaudible 0:54:41].

[applause]

Rico Singleton: Do you have any questions for Dr. Stewart?

Audience Member: It was a pleasure to hear you speak again. Question. Especially now with the economy, are you as a CIO working with public and private in other states and everything. Do you hear anybody talk about open source software? For right now, there is virtually a replacement for almost everything on a typical PC Desktop including the OS, including the major properties that we want. Is anyone looking into open source especially since now the economy is so bad?

Dr. Mayberry-Stewart: Yes, thank you. I believe everyone heard the question, right? Oh, you did not? Are these on? [background conversation]

Dr. Mayberry-Stewart: The question was about given this particular economy and with the emergence of more open source applications available, is anyone looking at that. The short answer is yes. When I referred to this strategy for openness is really the next step in terms of looking at that next step. We are also looking at it from a policy perspective in recall. Stand up. You can go up to a mic and talk all about it in terms of where we are going, in terms of that. We need to continue to evaluate that.

[pause 0:56:32]

Rico: We had opportunities across the state to leverage open technologies so that we can better (1) help assist to drive down costs for technology, but also we wanted to be innovative and we wanted to be one of the leaders of the forefront, but not necessarily at the [inaudible 0:57:05] forefront. Open technology is one of those areas that is picking up quite a bit of steam here recently in the recent years. Five or six years or more years ago, it probably was not prime time ready enough. But now it is. As you have referenced pretty much a replacement, per say, or option or alternative I guess I would be better emphasized for almost anything on the client PC as well as in large cases the mere backing infrastructure network operating centers.

So, the answer is, yes, we are looking at that. We have a team that's looking at exploring some of those alternatives and then from a policy standpoint one of the things that we are looking at is technology acquisitions and technology procurement. We're looking at putting in some language to ensure that agencies look at, at least consider alternatives and options for software and technologies that they are using.

We're not going to be prescriptive, we're not going to set any specific mandatory or required policies or anything of that nature, but we want agencies to start looking at and considering the alternatives and options when they are looking at renewing some of their software in their IT infrastructure because again we are at a very critical financially strapped economy, an environment in which we want to leverage in the opportunity. Before us to help us in a system that [inaudible 0:58:30].

If you have any questions or anybody else on this particular matter, feel free to contact my office and I'll be more than glad to discuss this with you in more detail.

Dr. Mayberry-Stewart: Thank you Rico. You have a question.

Audience Member: I have a question and I probably should have asked it while Rico was talking. It's surrounding the Empire 2.0. Let everybody preach your model in what you consider the collaborative tools to be more at the enterprise level... I know that you have developed some collaborative tools for CIO Council. The webmasters guild put up a name.com site to look at collaboration [inaudible 0:59:17]. What are your thoughts on that?

Rico: Thanks. Thanks also to all of the agencies who have actually started to make some entrances into the world of social networking. We definitely applaud those efforts for those who are being innovators in that area. My answer would be based on all three levels. My answer would be that there are certain things at the tier one enterprise level that we're having discussions and dialogue about in terms of putting together a collaborative platform that the entire state enterprise could embrace whether that be a collaborate portal or platform that any IT worker or any state employee could come a collaborate on subject matters of interest, that could be one instance.

I certainly think that at the tier two level or in the cluster level, there are some things that might not necessarily be fit for a tier one across the enterprise standpoint but are more germane to the clusters or those strategic levels that can bring together at least common areas of focus from a collaboration standpoint. Certainly the public safety and [inaudible 1:00:24] community can collaborate into particular community that doesn't necessarily need to share or cross-pollinate with human services but in some instances they would.

So, we want to make sure that we allow those tiers whether it be delivery of IT services or it be social networking and collaboration that you have those lines so that one from the enterprise standpoint and two from the cluster level that you still have those lines that you can confine yourselves to for specific areas of collaboration.

Then at the tier three levels, the agency specific level, there are a multitude of applications that are really going to be driven specifically at the agency. Some of the common ones for instance, just the use of Twitter and Facebook, but certainly we are not going to regulate or police you. At an enterprise level, every single agency is used to these types of tools, but every agency we has an interest or desire to expand their communication network, are you using a Twitter? Or are you using a Facebook? Or a Ning environment particular collaborative project within their agencies is simply at the agency level.

Who in part are those across that state-wide umbrella policy? We go to those opportunities and we go through the feedback from most of the agencies as well as the vendors who are in this particular area. It helps us to shape the strategies. We just lost [inaudible 1:01:41] and obviously we're looking in particular for ways in which we can [inaudible 1:01:44] a number of more socially collaborative software and technologies across the data enterprise in all three levels.

Dr. Mayberry-Stewart: Now, there is a final piece of that as well and that is the National association of state CIOs [inaudible 1:01:55] in terms of [inaudible] contract so that is a...