Jack Cranmer, CIO with the Scottsdale, Ariz., branch of the Mayo Clinic, hates being the guy who says no. So the clinic’s IS steering group does it for him.

Every manager or physician with an idea naturally thinks it would benefit the organization and should go on the to-do list. "If I had to interact with each proponent [of a project] and say, IT doesn’t think your idea is worth what someone else’s is, I would be miserable and so would my staff," says Cranmer. Instead, four board members?physicians and administrative executives?meet biweekly with the heads of major departments within the clinic and hospital to set IT investment priorities. Every proposal?whether it’s for a brand-new system, an upgrade or maintenance?needs the steering committee’s stamp of approval before it gets funding. And no project gets on the steering committee’s agenda unless it’s presented with a well-developed business case.

When a committee of top executives makes technology investment decisions, "there’s a lot more clarity" about the contribution IT makes to the organization, says Centex Homes’ Irsch. "I think it allows our IT organization to focus on more effective execution and less on having to sell things to the business."

That’s why 56 percent of best practices CIOs in "The State of the CIO 2003" survey said this practice makes CIOs highly effective in their jobs. Those who get the most out of their steering committees follow a few basic rules.

Get Strategic

CIOs who want to form steering committees or improve their existing committees’ decision-making processes should start by making sure their CEOs agree that IT has strategic importance to their companies. "You need to explain to [CEOs] that if they are going to be spending millions of dollars on technology, you need some type of structure that can help them sort through the priorities," says Cranmer. Once that principle is accepted, the next step is to give the company’s top managers a say in how the technology budget is spent.

IT steering committees have become more widespread in the business world as the importance of IT has grown. David Buchanan, director of information technology at Forsythe Technology, a Skokie, Ill.-based provider of technology management services, says his company set up an IT steering committee on the heels of a 2000 change in the reporting relationship for the CIO?from the CFO to the CEO. "[The CEO] wanted to make sure he had the right data to make decisions" about technology, says Buchanan, who joined the company two years later. A steering committee was the obvious way to align IT investments with business strategy.