Q&A With Matthew DeZee (TechNews.com)

DeZee was South Carolina's first state CIO. He recently joined a group of former state CIOs to meet with South Carolina legislators to share ideas about re-engineering the state's CIO position. The meeting was part of a state and federal CIO mentoring program called Chief Information Officers -- Senior Advisors to Government Executives (SAGE). The Washington-based Council for Excellence In Government organizes SAGE.

Matt DeZee was a great asset to South Carolina State government. I don't always agree with him, but his openness to input from the frontlines workers made trust of him easy. One comment he makes in his interview is regarding e-mail system consolidation. Part of the flaw in his argument involves an ignoring of the special needs certain elements of state government may have. Tailored systems can't be dumped into cookie cutter state government enterprise systems and end up with the same productivity result. Another flaw in the enterprise scenario suggestions involve the personnel implementing the solution. Those tasked with this in our state government have NOT demonstrated the expertise, desire, service or ability to implement such a system. Do I want my agency users to go from I think is the "best service" state government has to offer to some half-baked solution implemented by technologically backwards departments? Sorry, Matt, I miss you but I miss arguing some of your points even more.