Heidepriem leading new organization in new millennium
The six-month old, $137 million, and 350-employee technology spin-off based in Madison has begun to get multi-million-dollar traction despite a huge culture shift that its new CEO has been trying to put in place under the managerially rhyming sequential scheme of Form-Storm-Norm-Perform.
The "spin-off" is the new cabinet level Department of Electronic Government (DEG), spun out of the state Department of Administration.
The $137 million is its annual budget.
The "CEO" is the public-sector-challenged but hard-working Rebecca Heidepriem, a private-sector technology executive. Gov. Scott McCallum attracted her to the post of secretary of DEG and chief information officer for state government by telling her it would be the first of its kind, and giving her strong backing to really go after it and, she said, "to run the state’s information assets in a businesslike manner.
"That’s the only way I know how."
The traction is the millions of dollars of savings that McCallum and Heidepriem claim that DEG has already dug up, much of it from negotiating better terms on the state’s long-distance phone contracts and on software licensing contracts.
And the culture shift being developed under Form-Storm-Norm-Perform centers on such private-sector inspired approaches as customer service, cost modeling and justification, duplication-avoidance, aggregated volume buying, shared asset utilization, and coordinating and/or replicating efforts and assets already under way and in place.
"We’re getting into the Norm phase with finalizing our organizational chart," Heidepriem said.
And the Perform part, too, if a recent McCallum press release touting savings of $18.8 million achieved by DEG is any indication.
Perhaps a better indication is that department CAM’s, as in Customer Account Managers, have hit the streets and hallways of state government.
"We really have to earn the ‘business’ of other state agencies," Heidepriem explains, because many other agencies have their own multiple IT shops and their own troops of outside consultants.
"If we can’t do a better job at a better price, they’ll look elsewhere. My ego won’t be hurt."
The assets involved result from the state’s expenditure of more than $400 million per year in information technology. Given a three- to five-year life cycle for technology assets, that means the state has accumulated a billion dollars or more in IT assets. More particularly, the state’s data center that averages 10 million transactions per day is the second largest in the state. The state’s voice network that includes 90,000 Centrex lines and 25,000 voicemail boxes is the equivalent of the fourth largest phone company in the state. And the state’s data and video network, BadgerNet, links 1,200 state agencies, local governments, UW campuses, public technical colleges, and private colleges, and public and private K-12 schools, including libraries.
What’s all this mean for taxpayers and residents?
"We have two fundamental goals. One is to improve management of the state’s IT planning and resources," she said, by providing coordination, planning, oversight, and accountability.
"The second is to bring government closer to the people by putting information and services on line and (giving) access to government on their terms, anytime, anywhere."
That means taxpayers should see savings. Costs of providing information and services on line average just 10% of what it costs to provide them face-to-face. If state agencies distributed just 10% of their reports online, that would save $4 million per year. E-mailing pay stubs: save $300,000 per year. Using multifunction desktop printers; another $300,000 per year.
"There are all kinds of low-hanging fruit we see."
It also means that originators of limited liability corporations can register and launch on line. Vehicle owners can renew their license plates on line. Hunting and fishing folks can purchase their licenses on line. Anybody can find contact information for any state employee. Nearly 230,000 Web-surfers, the number last December, can do all this and much more by simply clicking on www.wisconsin.gov and surfing their way around a pretty navigable but robust state government Web site that Heidepriem says is only going to get better and soon.
"We want to be getting people on line, instead of standing in line," she said.
"The state bureaucracy is a holdover from the industrial age. We need to transform government, to bring government into the information age."
South Dakota native
A native of South Dakota, the daughter of a state senator, and a graduate of the University of Iowa.
For the past 19 years she worked for Xerox Corp., managing operations, training, and sales, including managing a 300-person outsourcing arm, developing the Xerox Leadership Academy, and leading a top-ranked sales team for the company.
She and McCallum came to know each other through her sister, who met McCallum in college.
In interviews on line, by telephone (surprisingly not in her car in her frequent commuting between Madison and her home in Milwaukee), and after a long, prepared presentation in January in Madison to AccelerateMadison, Heidepriem admitted that it’s not been consistently smooth sailing.
"It’s been like putting together a business plan while you’re already open for business," she said, a business operating in ways you didn’t have anything to do with.
While she is impressed with the technological capabilities of DEG staff, the "Storm" part has included hiring a new secretary; enduring "personal frustrations" related to the slower, consensus-oriented way of doing things among DEG staff and the many layers and agendas and constituencies; and living with the distractions as a public official of dealing with the media.
"I need to be more communicative about deadlines," she summarized about the pace of DEG performance.
As for having multiple constituencies:
First, during and after her presentation to AccelerateMadison (a one-year-old, energetically led organization promoting technology development), several people went after her pretty strongly about DEG using outside consultants (there are about 125) who they claimed were much more expensive and even redundant of talents already on board at DEG.
Then there was the questioner who wanted to know if private businesses could use some of the unused capacity of BadgerNet. "Don’t see why not," Heidepriem responded, in adherence to the original status of BadgerNet. Turned out to be the wrong answer, due to changes resulting from objections of public sector competing with private-sector suppliers. Heidepriem said she’s reviewing the issue because, in rural areas, telephone companies may want to get out of the access business anyway and let BadgerNet do the job.
Third, there’s state Rep. Brian Burke (Dem.-Milw.) and head of the state legislature’s Joint Finance Committee assailing the very existence of DEG as unnecessary, particularly attacking the salaries being paid to DEG leaders. Heidepriem is being paid just over $104,000, but said she took a pay cut of "close to $100,000" to take the job. The committee last year unanimously approved establishing the department.
And then there’s all the media attention given to a personal situation that arose last August, when a man named Jerome Brandl met Heidepriem and convinced her he needed help. She let him stay at the Milwaukee Athletic Club under her membership and use her car. He stole her $50,000 Mercedes Benz convertible Aug. 23, and later used the car for mor ethan two months to travel coast to coast, conning others.
In New York, Brandl, 34, passed himself off as a Milwaukee firefighter out who had come to help in post-Sept. 11 efforts. He stole money and property from another woman and through his fake fund-raising for firefighters. During more than two months, it is alleged that he did likewise in California, Nevada, Tennessee, Florida, and Pennsylvania.
At the AccelerateMadison meeting at the Fluno Center, a new business seminar and meeting center and mini-hotel, Heidepriem opened her prepared remarks with the off-the-cuff comment, "I hope you’ve come here to hear about e-government and not stolen cars."
Later iIn The Study Room, a posh bar at the top of Fluno, the consensus of those who heard her speech was that this was a woman with a sure sense of humor about herself and someone with guts, a strong sense of humor about herself, and a lot more important things to think and worry about than some conman. Such as bringing state government into the new millennium.
March 15, 2002 Small Business Times, Milwaukee
