Imagine being in charge of IT for an entire nation, one in which four out of 10 families live below the poverty line and few make it far enough in school to qualify for IT jobs. Imagine dealing with a remote and rugged landscape that still denies many residents access to electricity, much less the Internet. And imagine doing your job on a slim budget while serving a region the size of Connecticut. Now heap on several layers of bureaucracy that turn the simplest tasks into odysseys. Welcome to the world of Ben Standifer, director of information and technology for the Tohono O'odham Nation, an American Indian reservation in south-central Arizona.

His story is one of perseverance on a scale few in business can fathom. There are lots of tough jobs in IT that require enduring harsh environments and difficult working conditions, and there are those who have to please demanding bosses by performing miracles on shoestrings. But you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who has to endure the challenges Standifer does.

Still, this isn't a tale of hopelessness. On the contrary, what makes this story unique is that Standifer and his 14-person team believe they can play a part in spurring a renaissance that leads the Tohono O'odham tribe to prosperity and opportunities that have eluded their nation for generations.

	Standifer left Texas to head up IT operations for the Tohono O'odham Nation.

The Tohono O'odham Nation, recognized since 1937 by Congress as an indigenous, sovereign nation, is a study in contrasts. There's an evident community pride that belies the reality that the average household income was just under $20,000 a year in the 2000 census. The reservation itself seems to spread endlessly across the Sonoran Desert and boasts some of the most beautiful scenery in America. But the same terrain is stiflingly hot, dusty, and merciless in its ability to disconnect its inhabitants. Despite its contradictions, it's an environment that convinced Standifer three years ago to pull up roots in Texas, where he was director of a career-development school for the disabled, and move to the land of his mother's birth to head up IT operations for the nation's 27,000 residents.

The reservation--the second largest in the United States behind the Apaches'--is divided into 11 districts (equivalent to states) and comprises 2.8 million acres. Many of the residents live in Sells, the nation's capital and largest town, but a significant portion live in isolated villages. The name Tohono O'odham (pronounced To-ho-no O-oth-um) means "desert people" in the native language.

In Sells, many of the modest homes are neatly kept, and there's a strip mall containing a grocery store, video store, and post office. Still, not everyone accepts life on the reservation without commentary. On the highway sign leading into Sells, someone spray-painted over some of the lettering so it greeted visitors with the message, "Welcome to HELLS."

The reservation's landscape offers more beauty than economic opportunity.

A typical day for Standifer starts when the rising sun still glows a deep bruised red behind imposing Kitt Peak. He often jumps into his black Dodge Durango and heads off to troubleshoot everything from a stalled hard drive at a district agency on one end of the reservation to a balky satellite tower on the other. Standifer figures he logs 50,000 to 60,000 miles a year on his business travels, which often involve just two or three calls a day that may be hundreds of miles apart. Besides faulty IT equipment, some of which is still hanging around from the early '80s, he battles intense heat, rattlesnakes, scorpions, and more than once he's been stuck overnight at a relative's house because a sudden gullywasher cut off the route home. Free-range cattle, which traverse the reservation and often roam the streets of Sells, occasionally have to be shooed from the parking lot before he pulls in. Olivia Vanegas-Funcheon, VP of finance and administrative services for the new community college, once spent a morning freeing a steer that had gotten stuck in the fence outside her office.

When Standifer isn't on the road checking on IT operations at the 10 other districts and remote villages, he's at his office--a nondescript 12-by-12-foot room inside a converted double-wide trailer--in the nation's tiny capital district, where he reports to the executive branch of the tribal government. There his duties include typical IT functions such as overhauling the government's accounting system, setting up training for staffers, and installing E-mail servers. But with a small staff and so many constituents to serve, job title becomes moot. "As a director, I'm still frequently on my knees behind a machine or under a table checking a connection one minute, and then the next I'm jumping back up to meet with a district director to talk about GIS issues," Standifer says.