Public Sector IT Leaders - MUST READ!!

I am thrilled to announced that a book I recently contributed to, along with 35 other IT leaders has just been published and is available on Amazon.com. The book, titled "CIO Leadership for Cities and Counties: Emerging Trends and Practices" is a collaboration of insights and proven 'best practices' for IT leaders in Cities and Counties. It is not a typical 'theoretical' book, these are insights from IT leaders who have put these practices in use and witnessed first hand their success. These practices are very timely and aimed at helping current and future IT leaders be successful in their public sector craft. The book has 30 chapters covering areas such as leadership, governance, technology, innovation, human resources and knowledge. Without going through each chapter and author in this blog post I want to point out two that really hit home with my career in public service:

IT Consolidation: Tearing Down the Silos by Richard McKinney, former CIO of Nashville

In my many years of IT public service this has been a hot point, and one that really needs to be addressed. Richard talks through the history of why we have decentralized IT and suggests some very sound approaches to moving our organizations beyond the challenges and into efficient, effective and business focused IT.

Innovation @ Work: Models that Drive Transparency, Engage Citizens and Lower the Cost of Government Operation by Vivek Kundra, currently serves as the Federal CIO and formerly CTO of the District of Columbia

Vivek walks us through their "Apps for Democracy" contest and how DC was able to leverage "Cloud Computing" to increase their services and lower their costs. These are current phrases that are on the top of all IT leaders minds, and again, this is not text book theory, these are practices that have been put in place.

This book is a must have guidebook for one of the loneliest jobs on the planet - Public Sector IT Leader. For me it was a tremendous honor to participate, along with my business partner in the CIO Collaborative, Liza Lowery Massey, with such a fantastic group of true, "boots on the ground" IT leaders.

When you become an IT Leader in public sector, there is no real formal training (yet). You come from either the technology side (most common) or the business side, but it's your role to bring the two sides together, to align with and enhance the business. This book does what all IT leaders try to do if they are lucky enough to have the time, by talking to your peers who have had success in these areas and sharing. In these economically challenged times, the networking at conferences is not as easy. Bringing it together in a lost cost format is what our goal in the book is and I believe you will agree we reached that goal.

I hope to post more highlights of the book here, but my strongest recommendation is your click the link below choose the fastest possible shipping and get your hands on it. I truly believe you will not be disappointed.

PS - Private Sector IT Leaders - You will be surprised at how much of this applies.