The school system couldn't accurately document how many lunches were needed per school, which affected government subsidies for school lunches. Hickey decided to get IT administration services closer to where they were most needed. But most of his 51 IT staff members were supporting the mainframe, doing data processing or administration. So he tapped management-service provider Integris, a division of Bull HN Information Systems Inc., to take over management of mainframe applications. Hickey whittled his central IT staff down to nine people.
Hickey says the new structure creates some challenges.
For instance, while IT standards are in place throughout the school system, there's no centralized IT security program. Decentralization can cause other problems. They know their own needs, but they don't necessarily have a companywide context for what they're doing. Even in an organization whose goal is centralization, such ad hoc efforts are hard to control. The problem is compounded when organizations turn to outside contractors for quick fixes.