New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wants to centralize the state government's information technology functions.
Christie says it's absurd that each state department has its own I-T staff and operations and he believes the Office of Information Technology could better perform those functions.
He says a lot of information from private citizens is safeguarded by state government.
"And if any of you have gone through the nightmare of identity theft, and I have, it's ugly. So we need to do everything we can to make sure that we don't contribute to that possibility for any one of our citizens."
Christie has issued an executive order requiring state agencies to inventory their I-T assets so consolidation plans can move forward.
“This executive order puts every cabinet member notice that in our last seven months in office we are going to inexorably begin the conversion to a centralized I-T function and have that come out of the departments. They don’t know how to do it.”
Christie believes a centralized system would be more secure, efficient, and reliable.