March 5, 2015

Tallahassee, Fla. – The Associated Industries of Florida (AIF) today announced the launch of its 2015 Information Technology Council (ITC) and recently held its annual pre-session meeting at its Tallahassee, Fla., headquarters.  Since 2006, AIF’s ITC has served leading information technology and telecommunications companies that provide a wide range of information technology services and products to the State of Florida.

“We are proud to continue to represent one of the most important industries serving our state government,” said Tom Feeney, president & CEO of AIF.  “Our membership includes large, global IT organizations, mid-size organizations and smaller IT firms based in Florida, all with a common mission to provide leading products and services to the State of Florida in an open and competitive fashion.”

“AIF applauds our state legislators and Governor for the recent creation of the Agency for State Technology (AST), but we also realize that most of the work is still in front of us from an IT perspective, and that we must now position our state to better compete and serve its citizens in the years and decades to come,” continued Feeney.

AIF also announced that its board has approved the following IT Council priorities for the 2015 and 2016 sessions:

• Support of modernization and reform of state contracts for information technology and services focused on open competition, and the availability of the best products and services to the state agencies that need them.
• Support for the modernization of the State of Florida’s new consolidated data center.
• Support for an enterprise approach to business processes and systems in state government aimed at reducing duplicated functions that are supported across multiple state agencies.
• Support for an “investment view” toward IT spending in the State of Florida. Strategic and well-planned investments in IT should be viewed upon as essential investments in the future of our state.  The Florida Legislature must be willing to make prudent and long-term investments in IT modernization, in order to improve service to our citizens, the efficiency of our government, and our competitive position with other leading states for jobs and industry growth.

AIF also announced that Chuck Cliburn, president of New Capitol IT, has been retained as a contract lobbyist and business consultant to support the IT Council.

“Chuck has been associated with AIF for a number of years and has more than twenty years of IT industry experience in Tallahassee,” said Feeney.  “His leadership will be of great benefit to AIF and our IT Council membership.”

For more information, please contact Tom Feeney (tfeeney@aif.com) or Brewster Bevis (bbevis@aif.com) at the AIF headquarters (850) 224-7173, or IT Council Lobbyist Chuck Cliburn (chuck@newcapitolllc.com) at (850) 559-7900.