What new technologies are you interested in applying?

We have so many data warehouses. Now we're looking at how to make those useful from the standpoint of detecting fraud. For example, when a person dies the Indiana Department of Health issues a death certificate. Who'd like to know about that? Workforce Development, Family and Social Security Administration, Voter Records, Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Department of Revenue. We can automatically generate transactions or subscription notices to each of these systems using Web services technology.

Other states such as Minnesota are embracing VOIP to cut the costs of its regional and long-distance telephone bills. What about Indiana?

We cannot go VOIP across the state in one fell swoop. It has to be built over time. Part of our problem is that we still have Category 3 cabling in a lot of these buildings. There are certain agencies like Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Department of Transportation that want to start using VOIP in their remote locations. We put an RFP out for VOIP. Cisco (http://www.networkworld.com/news/financial/cisco.html) was selected for that contract with two channel partners. We will use that contract as building blocks. Then two or three years from now, when we're all on VOIP, we won't have five or six different VOIP systems that we have to integrate.

Indiana lags other states in security, with nearly one-third of its servers considered highly vulnerable to comprise in a report released in January. How well are you doing in terms of shoring up the security of Indiana's systems and networks?

When we inherited security, it was in the same shape as everything else. There were no security policies. One of the first things we did was write a very comprehensive security policy. Then we brought in a company to do an assessment of potential vulnerabilities. Since then, we have significantly reduced the number of vulnerabilities they found. The vulnerabilities that were found were mostly in servers in other agencies that weren't managed by us. We've consolidated those servers and put in the appropriate security patches. There might be 1 percent or 2 percent of our servers considered vulnerable now. As we've consolidated, we've significantly reduced the number of servers. We've gone from 2,500 in the state to 1,800. Our goal is to reduce down to 1,200. That makes it easier to manage, and we've standardized the configurations on them.

What grade would you give your office in terms of delivering services to its state agency customers?

When we first got here, I'd give us an F+ or a D-. I think we're at a B+ right now. We're shooting for an A-. I don't think we can afford an A. I hope to be at an A- in January.

Of all the steps you've taken to improve Indiana's IT infrastructure and management, which ones provided the biggest bang for the buck?

Our process for consolidation and the service excellence plan we developed, which includes the metrics we measure and how we communicate with people.

What were the biggest challenges you faced in terms of changing the way Indiana acquires and manages its IT infrastructure?

Getting all the other agencies to understand what was going to happen. We had a few hard meetings with agency IT directors. There were a couple that didn't buy into our plan and, quite frankly, they're gone.

You came to this job from serving as vice president of EDS' Midwest region. What are the key differences you see in managing IT infrastructures in the private sector vs. state government?

Procurements take much longer because you have to do the RFP process in certain ways. Recruiting is harder. Even though the pay is lower, we are able to give our managers a lot of power to make things happen and that's a positive for them.