I recently interviewed Teddy Abad-Perez, State of Colorado Division of Central Services, Department of Personnel & Administration- IDS Multi-Function Printer Program Manager and Brenda Berlin, State of Colorado Financial Services, Governor’s Office of Information Technology- Deputy Chief Information Officer, Chief Financial Officer. Teddy and Brenda agreed to further detail the “10-Step Plan for Working with IT” that they discussed in theirIPMA conference session, “Working Smarter & Together with your IT Department.”

1. Engage IT early and often—deflect praise.
The first step that we would like you to take is to engage IT early and often. The importance of engaging IT is really to get their buy in on any IT project that you have associated with your in-plant, whether that’s a web solution or software solution. Generally, what we suggest you do is deflect the praise on “this is ouridea.” This is a ‘together’; this is what we’re going to be doing together.

2. Absorb blame.
Choose to absorb blame. Do this because your IT department is the subject matter expert in IT. They might not agree with certain projects or a direction, but it’s very important to absorb blame. For instance, “We do not get the project architecture issue regarding the project. We are sorry that we didn’t get it to to you right away, but here are our ideas.”

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