Information technology and the finance officer.(from the editor)(Editorial)

Annually, GFOA produces an issue of the Government Finance Review focused on technology Each year, there are advances in technology to report on, as well as new ways governments have found to use technology to support productivity, decision making, and citizen involvement.

Citizens are comfortable interacting electronically in their professional and personal lives and expect to interact with their governments in the same way. Governments are finding that moving to constituent relationship management (CRM) systems to enable better communication with their citizens can help streamline service delivery and also save money. Shayne Kavanagh's article Serving Constituents, Saving Dollars: The Cost-Reduction Potential of Constituent Relationship Management outlines ways governments have benefited from implementing CRM systems.

Approximately 350 cities across the country are in some stage of implementing citywide Wi-Fi and hundreds more are exploring the idea. An important step in the decision-making process fails to the financial officer: calculating potential risks and rewards. In her article, Dollars and Sense on Muni Wireless, Becca Vargo Daggett looks at various models for evaluating Wi-Fi as a public investment.

Finance and IT departments are becoming partners in maintaining the technology base needed to run the business of government. Optimizing a government's technology expenditures requires the finance officer to take a leadership role in technology asset management. Financial considerations and accountability can consolidate and improve the decision-making processes for IT purchases. Robert Meehan takes a look at this issue in The Need for Financial Leadership in IT Asset Management.

While Wi-Fi and CRM are helping governments serve their residents and economies, technology remains the mainstay of the "back office" functions of government. Tight budgets and the need for costly upgrades for existing business systems creates a dilemma for many communities. Three Texas cities addressed their common technology needs with a consortium strategy. The article Consortium Buying: Best Practices for Local Government Implementations describes how, by agreeing to buy and share the same business software, these cities were able to purchase and operate technology collectively that they could not afford on their own.

As the cities in the consortium buying article discovered, there are many advantages to interlocal cooperation. The Michigan Government Finance Officers Association (MGFOA) recently developed a white paper on intergovernmental shared services that emphasizes the development of a sound business case as a basic step in successful service sharing. Art Holdsworth examines the pros and cons of inter-local cooperation and presents a model for evaluating such initiatives in his article Sym-bi-o-sis. Sym-me-try Syn-er-gy.

Anne Spray Kinney

Editor in Chief

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