Thursday, May 9, 2002

Thank you. I am proud to be here this morning to welcome you to the Michigan IT Summit. In particular, I am excited to have the opportunity to meet some incredible IT leaders like Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy and FCC Chairman Michael Powell.

But I am just as excited to have the chance to see good friends who are IT leaders right here in Detroit. Like Rootlevel’s John Lauer. What I like about John is that he has a bold vision for Detroit to be a world leader in the information technology industry.

In fact, I had a chance to tour Rootlevel’s headquarters a couple of months ago. And what I saw there was inspiring. This is an organization that understands technology is important, but that people are even more important.

For information technology solutions to work, you need more than the right software and hardware. The technology is not the hard part. The hard part is defining the vision and being able to lead your organization to achieve that vision. And that’s what I would like to talk about this morning.

When it comes to information technology, what is our vision for Michigan? And what is our strategy to make it happen?

Before I answer those questions, let me say that looking beyond information technology for a moment, my vision is for Michigan to be THE technology state. Whether it is life sciences, physical sciences, alternative energy or information, our goal is for Michigan to be a world leader, period.

That’s why we launched the Life Sciences Corridor initiative.

That’s why we are pursuing the Holy Grail of nuclear physics – the $900 million Rare Isotope Accelerator – for Michigan State University.

That’s why we recently unveiled NextEnergy, our comprehensive strategy to make Michigan a cluster of innovation in the alternative energy industry.

That’s why my number one priority earlier this year was winning legislative approval of the MI HiSpeed Internet Plan to speed up the deployment of broadband statewide.

And that’s why I just announced plans to develop a strategy to use technology to enhance education opportunities in the Upper Peninsula.

Focusing on information technology, we have identified three fundamental goals.

First, to foster the growth of a robust IT industry in Michigan and to attract new firms to the state.

Second, to put online state-of-the-art e-government solutions that both improve customer service and increase the productivity of the state workforce.

And third, to develop and implement a statewide strategy to manage IT needs across state government.

I’d like to devote a couple of minutes each to these three topics, and I would urge you to visit www.michigan.gov for additional information.

First, creating a robust IT industry in Michigan.

Key to this effort has been the leadership of Doug Rothwell at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. In fact, whether it is IT or any other industry, the MEDC is by far the best economic development agency in the nation! And key to their success has been their talented staff of dedicated IT Brand Managers and Business Development Managers who market Michigan to the world.

Doug’s strategy includes actively helping our existing IT companies grow by making them eligible for job creation tax credits and tax abatements. For example, after just two years, what we call the high-tech MEGA or Single Business Tax credits have resulted in more than 3,200 new high-tech jobs and $184 million in private investment. Our message to the IT industry is simple and to the point. If you don’t want to pay taxes, make Michigan your home.

We are also being very aggressive in our efforts to grow Michigan’s IT workforce.

In particular, we have partnered with local industry, workforce development and educators to build 18 Michigan Technical Education Centers, 15 of which have already opened to students. Last year, our M-TECs trained more than 16,000 students in high-skilled, high-demand occupations.

Nearly all of our M-TECs have an IT focus and several are IT dedicated, like Oakland Community College's MTEC. Also, we dedicate millions each year of economic development job training funds for IT training and we've been recruiting IT graduates both in and out of state for several years.

 Another key component of our IT industry growth plan is securing additional "anchor" IT companies to grow Michigan’s IT cluster. The most visible example of this is Covisint, but there are others.

What is especially exciting is that we are in the process of creating an IT "accelerator" in Ann Arbor in the new Michigan Information Technology Center. This IT center will be the headquarters of Internet2 and other IT associations or businesses. Our goal is for this 100,000 square foot center to be unique – with hoteling, incubation and networking space to grow out our IT cluster.

Something else that is unique about Michigan is our initiative to create the nation’s first high-tech, high-speed, online court – Cybercourt. As I have said before, in a world where ideas can become IPO’s at light speed, we need a court that can resolve disputes at light speed.

Another initiative that makes Michigan unique is our strategy to accelerate the development of broadband which was approved by the Michigan Legislature earlier this year.

This plan in includes the nation’s first state level broadband development authority to help finance the buildout of broadband and also a right-of-way authority to create one-stop shopping for service providers.

The bottom line is that we project this initiative will help to create an additional 500,000 jobs over the next ten years and add $440 billion to Michigan’s economic output.

Now, anyone out there who has struggled with a dial-up connection knows how important it is to have access to a high-speed broadband connection to the Internet.

Broadband is important to education, to health care, to public safety, to transportation, to government, to business in every possible industry. It is vital to everything that is important to me as governor. That’s why this initiative continues to be one of my top priorities.

This isn’t just about being able to download movies or games. This is about the future of your business and your ability to work and to provide for your family. Slow connections to the Internet hold Michigan back, and my vision is for Michigan to be on the fast lane to the future.

One key example of the importance of broadband is e-government. When citizens have high speed access, what government can do online expands exponentially.

I am very proud of what our e-Michigan Office has been able to do under the innovative leadership of Stephanie Comai. Already, our customers have access to more than 100 online services, ranging from the purchase of fishing licenses to the renewal of professional licenses.

At www.michigan.gov, users can also access 100’s of maps and other geographical information, view photos and records of prison inmates and access information about local schools. Easy access to this kind of useful information has propelled Michigan.gov to national leadership, winning all sorts of awards and recognition.

Most importantly, users are recognizing Michigan.gov as the place to go first for information. That’s why page views have climbed from around 1.2 million last October to more than 11.2 million last month. Our peak was more than 750,000 page views on tax day, April 15^th.

Customers use the site because it is much more convenient to go online than stand in line. But taxpayers benefit as well because we are better able to manage scarce resources. For example, we can reduce staff time devoted to low value activities like data entry. We can reduce the need for customer support because customers can do it themselves. And we can speed up processing times so that customers get what they want sooner. That all means lower costs and avoided costs.

Many of you here today are familiar with Gartner – one of the world’s premier IT consulting firms. Gartner recently reported that nearly 60 percent of all e-government initiatives either fail or fall short of expected outcomes.

These failures were not failures of technology but are largely failures of leadership and failures of management. Indeed, the experts at Gartner identify:

" . . . five imperatives that are proven success factors in implementing e-government solutions: focusing on the goal; establishing leadership; finding the appropriate skills and financial resources; investing in the building blocks; and continuing to keep the pressure on for ongoing progress."

Those five imperatives have been exactly the five key factors in the success of e-Michigan. And as I look ahead to the future of e-government, one of the biggest challenges of leadership is offering services that cut across all levels of government, local, state and federal.

Given different political agendas, different goals, different technologies, this task is incredibly daunting.

We all remember former President Clinton talking about the need to build a bridge to the 21^st century. Well, we’ve all made it over bridge. What we need now are electronic bridges that connect government at all levels with our customers.

Finally, my last topic this morning – a statewide government IT strategy.

Last year, we centralized all of the state IT resources and employees in one cabinet-level agency – the Department of Information Technology. And after a national search, I appointed Jacque Passino to lead this new department.

Our goal is to better manage state assets and contracts, extract savings from economies of scale and implement best practices across state agencies.

This consolidation builds on more than a decade of work that began with the establishment of a state CIO back in 1992. Since then, we’ve consolidated our data centers and built a statewide networking infrastructure.

Most importantly, we launched MAIN, the Michigan Administrative Information Network. MAIN provides managers with a fully integrated accounting, banking and purchasing system.

One IT project that I am particularly proud of is Michigan’s new Qualified Voter File. The QVF is a distributed database that ties all of clerks statewide to a fully automated, interactive voter registration system. Implementation of QVF eliminated more than 600,000 duplicate files and is recognized as the gold standard for election management nationwide.

A presidential commission led by Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford urged other states to adopt Michigan’s system.

Were there bumps along the way in implementing QVF? Sure there were. Was there resistance from users? Plenty of it. Was the technology questioned? Absolutely.

But as I said earlier, leadership was the key to success. As a result, citizens are benefiting from the commitment of our Secretary of State, Candice Miller, to putting this project online and in service to Michigan voters.

Looking ahead, there is no doubt in my mind that the pace of technological change will only grow faster. That means challenges of leadership become even greater.

As governor, my goal has goal has always been for Michigan to lead – in jobs, in schools, in quality of life. Technology, especially information technology, will help us succeed. But more importantly, the women and men in this room will provide the leadership that guarantees success.

Thank you all very much and enjoy the conference.