The question of eWork has been weighing heavy in my mind for several weeks now. I am convinced of the potential business benefit of the product. I believe that it could help the state do business in a more efficient manner. However, there are some issues with eWork that need to be addressed. If the following issues cannot be resolved, I would recommend that we concentrate on other things besides eWork:
- In order for eWork to be successful, there would need to be a product management resource that could devote most of his or her time to selling the product to agencies and getting them to develop processes with it. We wouldn't even be able to come close to having a positive hard ROI until we have 150 or so processes in production.
- ITS would need to create a robust eWork development product that not only was able to produce quality eWork processes rapidly, but also be more economical than private eWork consulting services. I believe that the agencies will choose not to develop very many eWork processes if they have to pay $200/hour to get it done. At a minimum, ITS would need 2 full time eWork developers.
- eWork has to be an enterprise initiative, with the full support and backing of the CIO. The risk of failure is higher if it is simply another product that ITS is force feeding to the agencies.
If ITS cannot allocate the resources mentioned above, and if eWork does not come to agencies as more of an enterprise initiative rather than an ITS product, then I say we don't do it. There are plenty of other products that we could focus our attention on. It is still a risky proposition even if those resources are allocated. eWork is a BPM engine, and we would need to get agencies to take a fundamental look at their business processes, as we are currently doing with DHRM for a pilot project. This is not an intuitive or automatic activity for most agencies.
I have these concerns, and I haven't even talked about how we would pay for it, and then recover the cost. That adds a completely new dimension to my concerns, and it increases risk even further, especially in such a tight budget environment.
7:51:31 AM 
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