Paul W. Taylor: June 2008 Archives

Washington Governor Chris Gregoire has suspended work on a new state data center, which is known locally as the Wheeler Project.  The price tag for what was the largest single capitol campus project, which twinned massive data halls with a multi agency office complex and targeted LEED sustainability certification as a green building, was originally pegged at $260 Million.  But that estimate jumped $110 million before the ground breaking for the new facility, thanks to added requirements for traffic mitigation and a rapid escalation in the construction costs of the data center (now estimated at $60.97per square foot compared to about $43 psf for the office space).  The state Department of Information Services, which was to be the anchor tenent and its own prime contractor, has been instructed to find ways to get the cost back in the box.

Washington is not alone.  The California DTS has also had to confront rapidly inflating construction costs as it continues the planning process for a replacement data center.

Despite the death rattle of legacy airlines, we -- as in Cathilea Robinett, Bob Feingold, Liza Lowery-Massey, Todd Sander and me -- have been traveling the country with a helpfully subversive idea for modernizing when you have no money.  It answers questions the Center gets all the time: (a) is anybody getting anything done?; and, what do we do now?

Our answer fits with the Zeitgeist in state and local government: larceny.  That is not to endorse the stealing of money or things (although that's been tried from time to time).  Instead, we are advocating that public agencies -- as this year's keynote title suggests -- Steal this Idea.  It digests dozens of ideas from hundreds of jurisdictions that have been used successfully to move forward in challenging times.

The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.  The people who stay to talk share a sense that we are at another inflection point -- perhaps the most important one since the arrival of the commodity Internet in the mid-1990s.  Maybe that's why its called Web 2.0.  Actually, the story is bigger than a version number (which we will explore in greater detail in the months ahead.)

In the meantime, the official mascot of the Steal this Idea tour - a petty criminal named Hunter - has been blogging on the nuggets found in the good work of the public sector IT community from coast-to-coast.  You can follow the tour through his blog at www.govtechblogs.com/hunter.