The shutdown, which began Monday, has forced the Office of Information Technology to cut its staff from 930 to just 80 employees. Those employees still on the job have been working to keep essential IT services operating, including the state's data centers and its network and Internet services. Those at work also include a limited number of application developers.
"Unfortunately, at a time like this, IT really doesn't shut down, Ebeid said. "If anything, IT really steps up quite a bit. This has been an excellent lesson statewide on how IT actually proved to be sort of the umbilical cord for government operations."
The crisis arose from a budget impasse between New Jersey lawmakers and Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat who appeared to be close to an agreement late Thursday that could end the state government shutdown.
Ebeid said his team relied on contingency plans that envisioned a disruption in services, "and that's pretty much what we are really facing." It is not unlike planning for absenteeism prompted by a bird flu, he said.
Ebeid said his biggest concern has been keeping the state's wide-area network running as well as ensuring the continuity of e-mail and Internet services.
"That's what's kind of glued the whole state government and local government together -- that's something I watch on an hourly basis," said Ebeid.
Once operations return to normal, Ebeid said he'll review the response for any lessons. "I think we can probably learn from this and hopefully document the decision-making process ... so that you try to bring some order to the chaos."
Important steps include having a clear chain of command so employees aren't making decisions on their own, said Ebeid. "There is a very clear and deliberate process from the top on what essential services you have to support, and the folks on the front line have to be very clear on what their next set of actions are," he said. "There is very little room for error, and there is no margin for delay."
Teri Takai, CIO of Michigan's Department of Information Technology, said that any time a state has a crisis, "we always learn a lot about what constitutes critical IT services." In her own experience, Takai referred to the 2003 blackout that cut electricity to some 50 million people from Michigan though New England.
"They will definitely get some good feedback on what constitutes critical services," she said.