The Granite State of the Art

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

In his office he frequently wheels around in a swivel chair to pluck a fact or figure from the IBM PC AT perched behind his big wooden desk. In the backseat of his chauffeured sedan, he taps away on the keyboard of a notebook-size Hewlett-Packard, stopping only when a sharp turn sends the little computer sliding off his knees. At home in bed, he parks the portable computer on his ample lap and reviews financial statistics, occasionally looking up to watch Ted Koppel on ABC's Nightline.

John Sununu, 46, is not just another well-heeled computer buff. He is the Governor of New Hampshire, and the data he pores over so diligently represent the state's $1 billion in annual expenditures. Using the computer and modem in his office in Concord, he can punch in his name and secret password, log on to the state's IBM 4361 mainframe computer, and get a quick reading, in glowing green digits, of the state's financial health: room-and-meal tax returns ($30.3 million as of last November); business profits taxes ($28.4 million); out-of-town travel expenses for the leaders of the legislature ($300). "It is my conviction that one needs to go down to the lowest source to get intimate, unbiased data," says Sununu, glancing at the screen of his desktop machine. "And I'm looking at the full data base [information library]."

The Republican Governor's prowess with computers has become legendary in New Hampshire. When a party worker complained that he was having trouble with his mass mailing program, Sununu spent a few minutes at his keyboard and solved the problem. Reviewing an environmental group's study of the impact of a new dam, Sununu zeroed in on a questionable variable in the calculations and set the record straight. After one of the Governor's eight children complained about a broken keyboard on his own home computer, Sununu scoured around for a replacement part and fixed it himself.

Sununu was inaugurated into the computer age in 1965 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he majored in mechanical engineering and taught himself programming to help expedite his doctoral thesis on fluid mechanics. In 1969 he moved to New Hampshire, added Republican politics to his long list of interests, served in the state legislature, and in 1982 was elected Governor in an upset victory over the Democratic incumbent, Hugh Gallen.

Thanks in part to his computers, Sununu was soon able to deliver on a traditionally unkept campaign promise: he balanced the state budget without new taxes. Using financial analysis software programs to enforce strict fiscal discipline, Sununu turned the $41 million deficit he inherited in 1982 into a record $47.8 million surplus last year. He also streamlined the flow of budgetary data and reorganized New Hampshire's financial reporting systems so that records of all revenue and expenditures were channeled into the state's big IBM mainframe computer. Loading data from the mainframe into desktop machines and analyzing the numbers with Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, the Governor and his staff can see at a glance where the state's money is going. Last fall, for instance, Sununu's office was able to forecast a shortfall in beer-tax revenues caused by the departure of summer-vacation guzzlers.

Sununu's hands-on, get-it-done-right attitude does not always sit well with local politicians. They complain that he is often arrogant and unwilling to listen to other opinions and that he speaks in computer-jargon "Sunununese." The Governor ruffled feathers in 1983, for example, when he decided to spend $2.5 million of state lottery receipts on Digital Equipment computers for use in the public schools--without consulting the legislature or the local school boards. The deal collapsed in the face of court challenges and protests from school districts that wanted to have a say as to which computers their students would be using.

But it is another computer--or at least Sununu's use of it--that has set off the biggest furor. Even before the new $5 million Integrated Financial System went into operation last July, the legislators had voiced their fear that the electronically stored fiscal data would not be made available to them. Sure enough, when the house passed a bill that guaranteed the legislative leaders access to the IBM mainframe, the Governor managed to block it in the senate, insisting that he retain control over who could see the information stored in the machine. Said Sununu: "They'll get what we think they need."

The legislators were furious; by holding the state's computerized financial data close to his chest, Sununu seemed to be trying to shift the balance of political power from the state legislature, where it has traditionally rested, to the Governor's office. "The advent of the information revolution is a double-edged sword," says State Representative Wayne King, a Democrat. "The question is whether everybody's going to have access to information, or whether we're going to concentrate it in the hands of a few."

After months of negotiation, Sununu finally agreed to issue a password to the chief legislative budget assistant and allow him to review, with certain restrictions, some of the data in the state mainframe. Still unresolved is the thorny question of how much of the computer's contents will be available to the public. Although the state supreme court has ruled that citizens may copy any public documents and information, Sununu maintains that the right to copy does not apply when the information is stored in a computer.

Surprisingly enough, Sununu's stinginess with New Hampshire's computer data apparently has not hurt him much among voters, who still display on their automobile license plates the Granite State motto: "Live Free or Die." In 1984, he was re-elected by 67% of the vote and today his popularity rating is at an all-time high of 56%. "The public is demanding significantly better management from government," he says, before lapsing back into Sunununese, "and computerization can help the state leverage the capacity of employees to function better." --By Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Reported by Joelle Attinger and Rod Paul/Concord

With reporting by Joelle Attinger, Rod Paul/Concord