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Ken Theis: How IT Makes Michigan Government Better, More Economical

This is from the August 12th update at Enterprise Leadership.

Ken Theis
Director of Michigan Department of Information Technology

Play Podcast (Right click to download)

The State of Michigan has become a pioneer in how to make IT work better and be more economically viable for its citizens. They focused on consolidating IT into one state agency, and then developing a strategic plan and an enterprise architecture to support the plan.

In 2001, the entire IT organization across the State of Michigan merged into the Michigan Department of Information Technology (MDIT), under the direction of Ken Theis. MDIT's 1,700 employees support 19 other state agencies. These agencies have a combined annual budget of $434 million, 800 business-critical applications, 55,000 desktops, and 1,300 telecom locations.

The consolidation reduced overall IT expenditures in Michigan by 34 percent, taking more than $100 million off the state budget. Some of these strategic moves included closing 23 data centers and creating three main data centers, reducing the number of email servers from 700 to 70, and centralizing one petabyte of data storage. Meanwhile, MDIT also addressed errors in programs, such as Food Stamps.

In this podcast, Ken talks about the agency's overall IT strategy, the components that comprise the enterprise architecture, the initiatives that are bringing smaller and more efficient government to the people of Michigan, and the challenge of managing IT investments.

Theis says, "If you can't measure it, you shouldn't be doing it. We continue to strive for returns on our IT investments. Sometimes the returns can be financial, and other times they might be services that benefit citizens. We're always looking to improve how we can increase the returns on our IT investments, especially in a tight economy."