Chapter Meeting

Ed Bailey

The Softer Side of Systems

About the Program:

Just as gardeners tend the soil before planting, the project manager or director must create the properly balanced environment before proceeding.

This start-up process is often overlooked because relationship building is dismissed as a ‘gimme’ and ‘everyone knows his / her job.’

In addition, projects are sometimes considered outside activities or ‘other duties as assigned’ for policy or business staff and are thus relegated to secondary status.

Project communication--vertically, horizontally, and externally--cannot begin too early and can hardly ever be too frequent.

Speaker Biography

Ed Bailey is President and Owner of Edgar Bailey and Associates, LLC, whose areas of concentration are information technology, management consulting, and mediation.

During Ed's 30-year career, he has supported and managed staff working through the complete development life cycle on both major and minor projects. He has personally performed all phases of the System Development Life Cycle: programming, requirement definition, analysis, development, site preparation, installation and other implementation activities.

As the Missouri Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) project director working with the Southern Alliance of States, Ed developed requirements for a prototype EBT system to implement a regional joint federal/state benefit delivery system. This entailed coordinating project directors from seven other states and representatives from five federal agencies. The project acquired EBT services through a Missouri contract and participated in the U.S. Treasury Invitation for Expression of Interest evaluation for vendor selection.

Ed directed the data processing staff of an inter-agency working group who developed an automated interface between Employment Security and Social Services, saving the state an estimated 2.5 million dollars a year.

Ed also acted as a Food Stamp Outreach Task Force resource identifying a low usage, high need population of the elderly and in farming communities. The Task Force met its goal of increasing the number of individuals in the targeted groups and in better using federal funding participation. Ed co-authored "Barriers to Participation in Missouri's Food Stamp Program: Issues and Conclusions."