Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Incoming Governor Lynch condemns New Hampshire website It's been a busy day, but here are the new cabinet members in the Huntsman administration: Administrative Services: D’Arcy Dixon Pignanelli Agriculture: Leonard Blackham Commerce: Russell Skousen DCED: Sylvia Haro (Community & Arts) Corrections: Scott Carver DEQ: Dianne Nielson Financial Institutions: Edward Leary Health: Dr. Sundwall DHRM: Jeff Herring DHS: Acting Director Ron Stromberg Insurance: Kent Michie National Guard: General Tarbet DNR: Mike Styler DPS: Robert Flowers UDOT: Jon Njord DWS: Acting Director John Nixon It will be interesting to watch the changes that result from this announcement.  Rod Decker of KUTV said to expect three more changes.  It looks like this may include DHS and DWS, the two largest departments in terms of personnel which are showing acting directors right now.  The Governor prompted in his inaugural address that this would be a period of change.  New Hampshire's incoming governor is looking to possibly do a reversal of an IT centralization initiative that brought  350-400 employees to the Office of Information Technology.  IT staff from ten other agencies were transferred to the office (which was established just a year and a half ago) as recently as October.  A web site that allowed citizens to buy Canadien drugs was one of many contentious issues: "Benson predicted that Lynch would bow to the state’s pharmacy lobby and take down the link on the state’s Web site for residents to buy drugs in Canada. “I think one of the conditions for him getting their support was to promise he would do this, which is too bad because it’s been helpful to people,’’ he said. New Hampshire was only the third state to offer its residents access to drug sales on the Internet, and Benson’s open defiance of the Bush administration got national attention last year. Lynch ridiculed the Web site as something a 14-year-old could have done in a single day and pointed out that only 800 had used the site to buy drugs from one of the companies. Information from the other vendor was not available." (Nashua Telegraph) Listed as one of outgoing Gov. Benson's principal accomplishments: "Information technology: Created new IT office to combine those working on computer tasks throughout state government into a single unit. His former chief information officer, Robert Anderson, became the state’s highest-paid bureaucrat at $150,000-a-year and resigned the same day he confirmed that much of $11 million in planned savings from this massive merger would not occur." It seems like IT, which is such an important asset and holds so much promise for changing goverment is always at the center of some new controversy. 6:36:08 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 David Fletcher.