CIO Insight Staff

Growing Pains: Six Case Studies Kaiser Permanente: Second Chance By Jeffrey Rothfeder After the failure of a long-term, $2 billion IT effort designed to centralize its mishmash of data networks, and a changing of both the CEO and CIO guard, Kaiser Permanente decided to start over again. Now, after a wrenching reorganization and the investment […]

Books Making Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change By Lawrence Hrebiniak Wharton School Publishing, 2005 408 pages, $27.95 It’s easier for executives to formulate strategy than to execute it, argues Hrebiniak, a Wharton professor and consultant. He offers a systematic execution roadmap for corporate leaders—steps for building culture, aligning resources and managing change—and includes […]

Every manager’s tool box contains a jumble of tools he or she uses every day, some jetsam that never quite matched the job at hand and, if the owner is clever, a little cup over to one side for pieces that are rarely useful for their designated purpose, but are invaluable for other jerry-rigging. All […]

Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.) said recently that he plans to introduce legislation to mandate the creation of an electronic health record (EHR) for every person covered by the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program. Porter, who heads the House Government Reform Committee’s Federal Workforce and Agency Organization Subcommittee, said the program would become “the largest […]

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, recently announced the award of more than $22.3 million to 16 grantees to implement health information technology systems to improve the safety and quality of health care. These projects are intended to contribute to AHRQ’s capacity to […]

For years now, ever since he wrote the bestselling The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business (Free Press, 2003), Don Tapscott has been imploring corporate America to bare it all. Now he has a different message: Share it all. Tapscott believes it’s time to abandon many of the “old-world” tenets of […]

Last year, F. Warren McFarlan completed a five-year stint in China as the senior associate dean and director of Harvard Business School’s Asia-Pacific Initiative. His assessment of the current state of IT in China? “Absolutely extraordinary.” The dean of American IT academics, McFarlan’s interest in China dates back to 1979, when he led the first […]

Doctors with a poor bedside manner can come across as cold, detached and devoid of emotion. But that’s nothing compared to the new interns at the Detroit Medical Center. This spring, the ten-hospital network spent $1.1 million to deploy ten robots in six of the hospital’s emergency rooms and intensive care units, assisting nurses and […]

Over his more than 35 years in IT and technology procurement, David Whitinger has seen it all. Currently, as director of consulting for International Computer Negotiations Inc., he helps Fortune 500 companies negotiate a wide range of technology and software license agreements. Whitinger’s experience has allowed him to form a long list of dos and […]

Put your party hats on: this year marks the 25th anniversary of the invention of the digital spreadsheet, a program that most technophiles consider part of the holy triumvirate of software (along with the word processor and the database) that helped usher in the Computer Age. To commemorate the spreadsheet’s longevity, Bill Jelen, a.k.a. “Mr. […]

Strong Signals: Does BPO Have a Future? By John Parkinson Organizational change is complex and painful, and effective automation can be difficult and expensive. So a lot of companies prefer to outsource the effort to business process outsourcing providers. It can be a very successful strategy if you choose the right partner. But in the […]