Earlier this year, the state of California called time on two major public IT projects. Between them, the botched court-house records project and the Department of Motor Vehicles' IT modernisation project cost the state over $500 million. 

In response, governor Jerry Brown appointed a task force to assess how the state government could improve its IT procurement and project management practices. 

The task force, which included the CIO of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the CIO of the Department of Defence, and the founder of digital government agency Blue State Digital, interviewed practitioners and experts to find out how the state government buys IT, and how it could be improved. 

Earlier this month, the task force published its recommendations. They were as follows: 

1) Replace the state's laborious feasibility study with a two stage process: an initial assessment followed by a detail assessment

2) Map business requirements before approaching vendors

3) Use business process re-engineering by default

4) Do more market research before choosing a supplier

5) Appoint a governance board early on in the project

6) Assess project staffing requirements at the state of the project

7) Keep a contingency budget that is relative to the size and complexity of the project

8) Assess, incubate and deploy alternative IT contracting models

9) Publish a model procurement plan

10) Evaluate the success of the procurement after the project is complete

11) Assess value qualitatively as well as quantitatively 

12) Promote the understanding the IT projects are iterative and will change over time

13) Establish a standard change-management framework

14) Large projects should appoint a contract-management office

15) Include contractual incentives to reward excellent performance / punish poor performance 

16) Collect and analyse vendor performance data

17) Seek to reduce vendor personnel change

18) Interact with vendors outside of project solicitations 

19) Improve communication with vendors

The task force's full report is visible below. 

Recommendations to improve large information technology procurements: A road map for success in California by adamjacobbecker