"Government is made up of a whole lot of discrete businesses under a common ownership structure and subject to a certain level of central strategic direction and control — as set out in government policy and law. But these businesses have varying priorities and needs, and are controlled at the top by different personalities. They are not going to easily fit into a standardized scheme, unless they have a totally compelling reason for doing so. Untested — and frequently fallacious — arguments that centralization brings efficiency are not going to be compelling. Indeed, one wonders if there ever can be a totally compelling argument."

Overall, Toomey believes the failings reflect a fundamental flaw in many organizations' ICT efforts — the view that ICT is all about computers and software. If the people responsible for the computers and software cannot make them work and produce results, then they have to be reorganized, controlled from a different place or outsourced. In reality, ICT is all about enabling business process, he says, and as we have seen over many initiatives — such as the recent Customs debacle — it is not so much the technology that is the problem but the way that the technology is used by the business in the pursuit of business goals.

"How else does one explain KPMG's findings in their '2005 Global IT Project Management Survey', which says that only 13 percent of organizations track benefits through to realization?" he asks. "How can the other 87 percent demonstrate, unequivocally, that their investments in ICT deliver intended business results?

"Who is responsible for ICT? All those who nominate the CIO should stand in the corner and wear a dunce cap!" Toomey says. "That's like saying that the CFO is responsible for the organization's finances. We all know that CFOs oversee the management of the finances, but others are responsible for generating income, allocation of financial resources and so on. The CFO is the focal point of a system of governance for financial resources. So too, the CIO should be seen as the focal point for a system of governance of ICT in which all executives have clearly understood responsibilities.

"Business leaders should have principal responsibility for ICT, because they determine the organizations' operations, and allocate its resources. If they have an outsider telling them when and where and how to use ICT, they can and will scuttle the intrusion simply by focusing their energies elsewhere, either deliberately or by lack of understanding of their role."

Toomey says organizations looking to establish a federated model of ICT delivery and operation should first focus on optimizing organizational use of ICT through effective top-level governance modelled on the six principles set out in AS8015, and then designing their delivery approach that properly fits their real business need.

"The federated model doesn't work and never will work," agrees one consultant who prefers not to be named for fear of compromising his relationship with government. "There are many instances of it not working, with the Victorian government office of the CIO being a notable, and current, example."

To the consultant's mind the Victorian experiment perfectly illustrates the failings of the federated model. He says the effort was poorly structured from the start, leading to frequent and inevitable clashes of priorities between the office of the CIO, which had responsibility for setting policy, and the office of the CTO, which had to implement that policy.

And while the two offices together were charged with setting policy and directions for the whole of government, each individual department still managed its own IT budget, funded by the department's business areas. That set up an automatic conflict between the internal IT of individual departments and the overarching IT mandated by the premier, through the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

"A lot of ideas, a lot of concepts came up and a number of them were attempted but ultimately they failed because if you've got federated management within individual government departments, and then you've got federated management of IT across the whole of the government, where's the cooperation? Where is the interest from an individual department to actually toe the line, if they've already got their money?" the consultant asks.

The federated model relies on cooperation to work, even when distinct business units (or organizations) are in conflict over priorities, contracts, resourcing or strategy, the consultant says. Inevitably the model breaks down when the parties are in conflict. Yet under the model, everybody has different priorities, unless the over-arching body setting the group priorities acts like a dictator, ignoring the concerns of the many parties involved.