Although budgeting and planning for a new year always seems to involve a surprising amount of original process, the real issues that lurk in how we conduct ourselves this time of year are about our administrative systems. And to be frank, the survey results that speak to these systems, contained in this month's issue of Cutter Benchmark Review, surprise me. We are all over the map when it comes to budgets, organization, and IT governance, despite an emerging picture of state of the art. I don't think this much variety can be accounted for by differences in industries and businesses.