Florida's New CIO Puts Focus On Consolidation

Consolidation is the theme behind several IT projects that Florida's new CIO has on her agenda.

Kimberly Bahrami, who landed the position after serving as acting state CIO for the past year, and her team of 400 employees are building an infrastructure used by all state agencies that provides voice, video, and data on a single network. "We're looking at how can we achieve economies of scale by consolidating," she says.

Bahrami, who manages an annual budget of $350 million, also is looking for ways to reduce duplicate spending on IT equipment and software that is used by multiple state agencies. Her goal is to use the state's buying power to negotiate volume pricing on popular purchases. "We have several agencies that purchase office-management applications like Excel or Lotus Notes on an individual basis at a much higher price," than if we bought in volume, she says.