Matt Miszewski, International Man of Mystery

Did you know the State of Wisconsin had a CIO? I had no idea until I goggled Department of Administration Administrator Matt Miszewski.

Turns out that CIO stands for Chief Information Officer, and Wisconsin’s is a bit of a celebrity. In fact he’s been quoted extensively in dozens, maybe hundreds of newspapers, magazines, corporation catalogs trade publications , throughout the United States and the world. One of the articles I found was written in Chinese.

Miszewski has also been invited to speak at numerous conferences and meetings hosted by public organizations and private corporations in places like San Diego, CA, White Sulphur Springs, WV, New Orleans, LA, and Ontario Canada. Last but not least, Miszewski is President of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO).

Miszewski is sought after to discuss the Doyle’ Administrations’ ACE initiative. ACE, an acronym for Accountability Consolidation and Efficiency, has included everything from revamping the state’s procurement procedures and travel contracts to the consolidation of the state’s electronic email service.

The travel contract has been problematic. First Orbitz.com pulled out of its contract when the state insisted the company charge a sales tax on all transactions. Then Doyle was forced to cancel the state’s contract with Adelman travel after an administrative official was charged with manipulating the bidding process to favor Adelman.

Last week the bottom fell out on the state’s email consolidation plan, another ACE project which has already cost the state more than $2 million dollars. So the CIO did what any good CIO would do, he threw the project manager under the bus. Werner Gade, who was responsible for day to day management of the project, resigned the same day Miszewski and Bablitch announced that they were ditching the email consolidation project.

I can’t help but wonder: would things have gone more smoothly if Wisconsin’s well traveled CIO had spent more time overseeing the consolidation of state resources and less time talking about it?