Quelle: CIO, Asia

AFTER ONE WEEK on the job as CIO of Des Moines, Michael Armstrong wasthinking he'd made a big mistake moving to Iowa from Lexington,Kentucky.

He was discovering that the capital city's civil servants thought theywere doing just fine without IT. Many of the 2,100 city workers wereperfectly content to work with paper, pens and Post-it notes--eventhose who had access to the city's antiquated desktop PCs. AsArmstrong strolled past one department head's office in September1997, he noted that his computer monitor served as nothing more thanan expensive frame for his children's artwork. And in a departmentmeeting, he butted heads with the assistant chief of police, whoexplained in no uncertain terms that he did not want the CIO tellinghim how to run his department. Today, Armstrong has moved Des Moinesfrom a mainframe to a distributed environment, installed a fibre-opticnetwork to connect all facilities, and developed the city's firstsystems standards. But winning over busy and technophobic policeofficers, city clerks and administrators was what kept Armstrong up atnight. And in the end, he ranks it as his greatestachievement.

Getting Off on the Wrong Foot

To be sure, Armstrong didn't know how to win his users over rightaway. In fact, his first attempt was a disaster. He wanted toimplement a PeopleSoft Inc. application for financials and HR. Hedecided to do the project in nine months and introduce the financialsand HR pieces all at once, hoping to get the pain over quickly,somewhat akin to ripping off a Band-Aid. But during the course of thenine-month rollout, 40 percent of the employees in the financedepartment's accounting division left; some involved in theimplementation simply got burned out by the long hours while otherswere scared off by the changes to their jobs. The HR department alsolost a few employees. And halfway through the project, Armstrongrealised his staff wasn't going to cut it in the new environment. Hefired 60 percent of his workers.