Bill Schrier is chief technology officer and director of the department of information technology for the City of Seattle. An Iowa native, he was an army officer, a street cop and a high school teacher before entering city government. Today, he heads what is essentially Seattle's IT department, and is responsible for the city's data centers, desktop computers, website, utility billing systems, and municipal TV channel. Schrier spoke to TechFlash about his background, how Seattle's budget woes are affecting his department, and his embrace of blogging and Twitter.
Tell me about your background.
"I was appointed by the mayor in October 2003, so it's been about five years now. I worked in city government prior to that. Essentially I became CTO after working my way up. Though they did a national search for a CTO, so I actually had to apply for the job. I've done a bunch of other stuff in the past. I've been an army officer and an army reservist, a police officer -- not in Seattle, elsewhere. I was a street cop for four years and I was a high school teacher. High school teaching was the hardest job, let me tell you."
What was teaching like?
"There are discipline problems and the classroom is kind of chaotic the first year and I wasn't very much older than the kids the first year out of college. Let's just say I've got great respect for teachers."
What are your job duties as CTO of Seattle?
"Eighty percent of the job is running the internal technology of city government. I’ve got 215 people in my department. We call it DOIT, which stands for department of information technology. The budget is about $59 million, which sounds like a lot and it is a lot, but that's out of a $3.9 billion city budget. So it's only like two percent of the city's overall budget. And most of that is running an internal city phone network and desktop computers and data center -- a 24-hour, seven-day a week computer center that does mundane tasks like the utility billing system for Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities. Then there's a smaller part of my job -- the Seattle Channel, the municipal TV channel is part of my department. And the city's website is part of my department and we also have a community technology part, which is trying to bring technology to people that don't have access to it in neighborhoods, putting computers in community centers where people who don't have access to computers can use them. For the most part we do stuff that's internal to city government, but we do some external things that touch the lives of people in the city."
How has the economy and budget cutting affected your department?
"There were a set of 2009 budget cuts which the mayor announced this year. And the cuts for my budget were on the order of $750,000. That's for this year -- for 2009."
What do you expect going forward?
"I think the deficit the city is facing -- that number will be three or four times larger (than $750,000) next year. We'll have to find reductions on the order of three or four times that amount."
Do you anticipate layoffs?
"For those cuts in 2010, we will undoubtedly have cuts in services and probably layoffs. Here's another number for you — about 40 percent of my budget is people and 60 percent is things like phones and computers. Whereas other departments might be 80 to 85 percent people. So in my department I would hope to avoid layoffs because my personnel number is so much lower, but I don't know. That's something I have to work through over the next few weeks."
You have your own blog. How did you get started?
"I started it about a year ago. It was April of last year. I was trying to expose what goes on with information technology in the government to give it more transparency. If you're a resident of the city, you know technology is there. You know there is video in police cars. You know when you receive your water bill it's computer generated or tracked. But you don't know all the work that goes into it. I was trying to expose that internal work."
You’re also on Twitter. I noticed a few months ago you tweeted about an internet slowdown in Seattle city government, which you attributed to overuse of Facebook.
"On inauguration morning January 20th, the networks went under stress because of all the video feeds. Everyone was watching it on the internet. It's OK for city employees to watch this on government time because it's about the orderly transition of government. But nevertheless our networks spiked up and we had problems with the network that morning. It didn't go completely down but things were very slow because of the video use. I also blogged last year about how I felt it was inappropriate for city employees to use the internet (at work) for certain sorts of things – shopping, for example, gambling, dating sites, and we might very well consider how to block that kind of use."
What kind of reaction did you get on that?
"It's kind of across the board. Internal to city government, I think most people tend to agree with that, that people shouldn't be using gambling sites or dating sites. But Facebook, for example, if you're on your lunch hour, can you update your Facebook? And should city government have an official Facebook presence? And I think the city will have a Facebook presence in the next couple months. That's kind of a gray area in terms of city employees because of the public outreach part of it. The same thing with Twitter. My Twitter address is twitter.com/billschrier. I Twitter about a whole variety of things. I just tweeted about the UW's $73 million in budget cuts. I tweeted about that because I thought that's so relevant. The UW produces graduates that are used by our economy, by Microsoft and tech startups."
What else do you tweet about?
"I tweeted about the iPhone I gave my wife for Christmas. In city government, we buy HP equipment and the Windows operating system. That contract was competitively determined. The reason we buy HP and Microsoft Windows is it’s easier for us to maintain. People don't have to worry about going to an HP at some desk and a Dell and a Compaq at the next. You don't find Macs in city government. We don't have Macs because they don't run Windows, which is the standard business software, and Windows computers are cheaper than Macs. I like to joke about having a mixed marriage. I use Windows at work and at home, and I use a BlackBerry. And my wife is an iPhone person, she uses an iBook and I gave her an iPhone for Christmas."
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A closer look at Bill Schrier
Age: 60
Hometown: Traer, Iowa. Schrier grew up on a farm that’s been in his family for 110 years.
Hobbies: Astronomy, running, cycling.
Education: Masters in Public Administration, University of Washington. Bachelor’s degree from Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, in physics and math.
If you were not CTO of Seattle, what would you be doing: “I'd be city manager in a smaller city someplace, a city like Renton or Kent or Burien. I'm interested in all aspects of government, not just the tech part. I'm not sure I would actually run for office. It's kind of crazy.”
Car: 2001 Honda CR-V.
Favorite tech gadget: Sony digital camera.
Vacation destination: National parks -- Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon.
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