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The twin-engine plane flew high above the rocky terrain, over the Euphrates River, and spiraled sharply toward Baghdad International Airport, thus eluding surface-to-air missiles. Upon its descent, the constant banking strained the engines, and they began to smoke. "We're fine! This is normal!" the pilot barked.
George Danforth shook his head. These were his first moments in Iraq. He and the plane's other two passengers had spent the last seven days preparing for their mission, with debriefings in Washington, D.C., and cultural acclimation in nearby Amman, Jordan. They had been handpicked to create a sweeping technology strategy for a new Iraq. But now, as Danforth watched smoke spilling from the engines, he thought: This is going to be a lot harder than I imagined.
Setting Up A Federated Model |
Danforth and his team created a plan that employs a federated model and can be used in a large or departmentalized corporate environment.
People
- Establish a government/enterprise-wide IT organizational framework that includes a CIO for each ministry/unit and a national/central CIO office that reports to the prime minister/CEO. This keeps the top CIO out of departmental politics. This CIO chairs a council of ministry representatives.
- Develop a strategy for IT training and human resources development. In Iraq, the plan called for the government to initially fund training through public universities and later to contract it out to the private sector to boost the country's economy.
- Supplement in-house IT staff with expert contractors while developing training programs.
Process
- Define IT management processes and functions. Align technology with business using COBIT framework.
- Develop and deploy IT security policies and guidelines for both data and physical security.
- Create facilities for centralized operations and the hosting of applications. Build a primary data center (for Iraq, in Baghdad) and a backup center at a remote location.
Technology
- Engineer and implement a shared data communications network. Build a centralized customer-care center and integrated network operations center (NOC), as well as a backup NOC. Centralize procurement.
- Develop an integrated plan for email and the Internet.
- Develop an integrated plan for common applications, such as human resources, payroll and finance. For department-specific needs, acquire off-the-shelf software.
- Deploy a standard operating environment for PCs and servers so centralized operations can service them.
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There has never been a CIO assignment quite like Danforth's. He stayed nearly 100 days in war-torn Baghdad, from February to May last year, helping to unlock technology's great potential for some 26 million Iraqis. And he was in harm's way nearly all this time, staying at a hotel where insurgent informants lurked in the hallways. He traveled to city slums amidst mortar blasts and gunfire.
Danforth's mission was to assess Iraq's current technology capabilities, propose strategic projects that could be accomplished over the next three years and deliver a detailed roadmap for doing them. These documents, officially known as the IT Strategic Plan, would consist of a 97-page report detailing 10 recommendations for building an IT infrastructure and a more tactical 900-page CIO handbook. The plan was a critical piece of a massive and controversial U.S. contract with consultancy BearingPoint Inc. to rebuild Iraq's shattered economy.
The mission called for a nimble three-person team, with each member having special skills in one of three IT areas: strategy, process or architecture. Assembling the team was no easy task. Each member had to be willing to work in a combat zone and possess enough political savvy to navigate a complex network of giant organizations and playmakers. Among them: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; the Department of Defense; BearingPoint in the U.S.; BearingPoint in Iraq; the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which controlled spending; and the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), headed by L. Paul Bremer. (The CPA administered Iraq from March 2003 to June 2004.)
Two BearingPoint consultants with deep knowledge in process and architecture joined the team. Rumsfeld's assistant called CEO Doug Tatum of Tatum Partners LLP, an Atlanta-based provider of professional services for top companies, and asked if he knew of a strategic CIO to fill out the roster. Tatum searched his firm's database and came across George Danforth, 57, a 30-year technology veteran with stints in Australia, Asia and Europe who had managed technology projects that served 40,000 or more customers. He'd worked at IBM Global Services Australia, Fidelity Investments, Lend Lease Corp., GTE Corp. and FMC Corp. "Looking at what he'd done in the past, I got a sense that he could capture strategy in a practical form," Tatum says.
Tatum called Danforth and laid out the dangerous mission. Danforth, who had just returned from Australia, had been with Tatum Partners for less than a month, making this his first assignment. "My initial thought was that I must have drawn the short straw," he says. Later, he admitted being swayed by the prestige of such an assignment. "If I did this and survived, I'd gain an immediate impact-reputation within Tatum Partners," Danforth says. He discussed it briefly with his wife, Diana, and then signed on. (Money didn't really factor into his decision, he says. Compensation, including a danger bonus, amounted to less than $1,000 a day -- not exactly a windfall for a CIO of Danforth's caliber.)
A few days later, Danforth met his teammates in Washington, D.C., for briefings. At the time, the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue was only six months old, car bombings targeted mostly military personnel, and the world had yet to witness the horror of civilian beheadings. Still, much of the debriefing proved fruitless at best, and irresponsible at worst. One senior advisor told Danforth that he'd be able to dine at restaurants and visit shops in downtown Baghdad. "He either didn't have a clue or was on a super sales mission to keep the team staffed," Danforth says.
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