Build an IT Strategy for a Local Government

Success for a local government depends on having IT initiatives clearly aligned to organizational goals, enabling IT excellence and driving technology innovation.

Analyst Perspective

Align IT strategy with organizational goals to enhance service delivery to residents.

Government IT leaders operate in a complex and dynamic environment that is shaped by numerous external and internal factors. These include budget constraints, compliance requirements, evolving technology trends, changing resident expectations, and the need to collaborate with and cater to multiple stakeholders. IT leaders are expected to execute modernization plans for aging technology applications, upgrade poor or sometimes non-existent data infrastructure, and manage security and privacy, as well as develop and retain increasingly hard-to-find technology talent.

In this environment, it is imperative that government IT leaders have a clear understanding of the organization's priorities, objectives, and resources so they can develop an IT strategy aligned with organizational goals. A clear understanding will also help them ensure that their technology investments maximize value creation through improved operational efficiency, better cost management, and an enhanced quality of services provided to residents.

This blueprint and the associated tools will provide you with a step-by-step approach to achieve an IT strategy that is in sync with your organizational objectives and will help you establish IT as a strategic partner in the broader government organization.

Anubhav Sharma Research Director, CIO Strategy Info-Tech Research Group

Expert Opinion

Think organizational value, not just technology, to create an effective IT strategy.

Being a CIO in a local government is different from being a CIO in the private sector. While all CIOs are concerned with aligning IT objectives with the firm's objectives, the main concern in the private sector is revenue growth. Thus, CIOs in the private sector focus on technology initiatives that drive business growth and help the overall bottom line at the end of the fiscal year. After all, there is one single goal of being in business: to generate a profit and push to gain more market share in the firm's segment.

Being in your shoes, as a public sector CIO, is a different story. Local governments don't strive for revenue growth as much as community integrity, support, and governance. They focus on maintaining low crime or lowering crime, investing in parks and recreation facilities for residents' use, and driving value for the community to attract people and businesses that will settle in the community and contribute to the local economy and the overall prosperity of the community as a whole. The closest thing to driving revenue growth for local governments is economic development within the community. While that does bring in some revenue, the goal is more focused on creating jobs that provide income and a great life experience for the residents.

This blueprint and the associated tools will guide you through the appropriate methodologies and processes to help you, as a public sector CIO, create a solid IT strategy that aligns with your government leadership's goals to help drive value for your organization and community.

D. Brent Messer Author, Value-Driven: The CIO's Handbook for Digital Transformation and Innovation in the Public Sector Executive Counselor, Executive Services Info-Tech Research Group

What is an IT strategy?

An information technology (IT) strategy provides a holistic view of the current IT environment, the future IT direction, and the initiatives required to achieve the desired future state. It has the following characteristics:

• It is defined based on the organizational imperatives it enables, not the technology used to accomplish these imperatives.
• It should support nimble, reliable, and efficient responses to strategic objectives.
• It should guide the prioritization of initiatives, focused on organizational value, while ensuring alignment between IT and the organization.
• It is not a list of IT initiatives that has been developed in isolation. It must be aligned with organizational needs.

IT

Defining an IT strategy means organizing IT's financial, technical, and human resources around the organization's goals and providing oversight to manage risks.

IT decisions are made with a focus on long-term investments, and initiatives are prioritized based on an organization-first approach.

City/County/Municipality

An IT strategy ensures the wise investment of dollars on IT initiatives that help achieve organization goals and objectives while driving future growth.

An IT strategy enables the alignment of IT activities with organizational objectives and sets expectations about what can be achieved.

Source: Info-Tech's IT Strategy Workshop Facilitation Deck

Challenges and opportunities in government IT

Challenges

• Meet heightened resident expectations on delivery of government services, caused by shifts in attitudes since the pandemic and generational changes.
• Manage a finite budget, requiring prioritization and hard decisions on where to spend.
• Adhere to stringent compliance requirements, including security standards, accessibility requirements, and privacy laws.
• Modernize legacy systems while continuing to ensure critical city/county/municipality support.
• Attract, retain, and upskill top IT talent while facing competition with the private sector.
• Deal with rise in cyberthreats and data breaches, which enhance the need for robust security measures to protect sensitive government data.

Opportunities

• Lead digital transformation by leveraging new innovative technologies, such as AI.
• Incorporate user-centered design thinking while developing services/products.
• Leverage data analytics to identify trends, gain insights into department operations, and make better data-driven decisions.
• Defend against cyberthreats by implementing zero-trust security, shifting from securing network boundaries to focusing on verifying users, assets, and resources.
• Migrate to cloud computing to reduce costs, increase flexibility, and improve service delivery.
• Develop cross-department collaboration to focus on similar use cases for service modernization and, thus, multiplying resource effectiveness.

Info-Tech Insight

Understanding these challenges and opportunities will give you unique insights on key focus areas for your IT strategy.

Executive Summary

IT strategies are often nonexistent or ineffective.

• According to our Management & Governance diagnostic (MGD), 64.0% of governments have an IT strategy process that they feel is ineffective (n=89 since January 1, 2021).
• IT does not do a good job of communicating its support for organizational goals. Therefore, 17.5% of government leaders still feel that their goals are unsupported by IT (Info-Tech's CEO-CIO Alignment Diagnostic; n=57 since January 1, 2021).
• IT departments that have not developed IT strategies experience alignment, organization, and prioritization issues within the broader government organization.

Three-quarters of surveyed executives value technology leaders with experience in fostering operational stability and strategic alignment (CIO Journal, 2020).

• However, the CIO is often seen as an order taker by the broader organization's leaders. This usually results in the demands on IT far outstripping its budget.
• Projects and initiatives are not prioritized around the organization's objectives. Synergies and dependencies are recognized too late. Projects are often late or put on hold because of sudden changes to organizational requirements.

Info-Tech's approach for local governments will help you develop a strong IT strategy.

• Use Info-Tech's local government–focused approach to discern your organizational context and develop your strategy.
• Clearly communicate to government executives how IT will support the government's key objectives and initiatives using Info-Tech's Local Government Strategy Presentation Template.
• Use Info-Tech's prioritization tool to help you make project decisions in a holistic manner, which will allow you to select the most-valuable initiatives to become part of your IT strategic roadmap.

Info-Tech Insight

A government CIO has three mandates: enable organizational productivity, run an effective IT shop, and drive technology innovation. Your IT strategy must reflect these three mandates and show how IT will strive to fulfill them.

Info-Tech's approach

1. Establish the Scope of Your IT Strategy
   Establish the scope of your IT strategy by defining IT's mission and vision statements and guiding principles.
2. Review IT Performance From Last Fiscal Year
   A retrospective of IT's performance helps you recognize the current state while highlighting important strategic elements to address going forward.
3. Build Your Key Initiative Plan
   Elicit the organizational context and identify strategic initiatives that are most important to the organization. Then build a plan to execute these initiatives.
4. Define IT's Operational Strategy
   Evaluate the foundational elements of IT's operational strategy that will be required to execute the key initiatives successfully.

Info-Tech's methodology for IT strategy

Info-Tech's methodology for IT Strategy

	01 Organizational Context		02 Key Initiative Plan		03 Operational Strategy		04 Executive Presentation
Lightweight Assessment	Conduct Org. Goals Exercise	Use Capability Map Template	Interview CAO/City Manager, Peers, and IT Managers	Brainstorm Success Stories	Brainstorm List of Projects Approved by Business	Collect Minimal Operational Strategy Data	Collect Minimal Initiatives and Roadmap Data	Collect Minimal Operational Strategy Data
Thorough Analysis	Follow Org. Context Methodology	Conduct Half-day Industry Guided Implementation	Launch Business Vision, CEO-CIO Alignment, and MGD Diagnostics	Gather & Organize Past Fiscal Strategy Documents	Conduct Strategy Workshop	Conduct Strategy Workshop	Conduct Strategy Workshop	Conduct Strategy Workshop

Blueprint deliverables

Key deliverable

Local Government IT Strategy Presentation Template

A highly visual and compelling presentation template that enables easy customization and executive-facing content, developed based on ITRG's experiences working with key local government members

The Local Government IT Strategy Workbook supports each step of this blueprint to help you accomplish your goals.

Goals Cascade Visual

Elicit org. context and use the workbook to build your custom goals cascade.

Initiative Prioritization

Use the weighted scorecard approach to evaluate and prioritize your strategic initiatives.

Roadmap/ Gantt Chart

Populate your Gantt chart to represent your key initiative plan visually over the next 12 months.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 2 to 4 months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Workshop Agenda

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Workshop Requirements

Launch Diagnostics

Launch the CIO Business Vision diagnostic.

Launch the Government Leadership-CIO Alignment diagnostic.

Launch the Management & Governance diagnostic.

Gather all historical diagnostic reports (if they exist).

Contact your Account Manager to get started.

Organizational Inputs

Gather org. strategy documents and find information on:

• Organization goals
• Organization initiatives
• Org. capabilities to create or enhance

(If your organization does not have org. strategy documents, contact your Info-Tech Account Manager to get started.)

Interview the following stakeholders to uncover business context information:

• Government Leadership/CAO/City Manager
• CFO

Download the Business Context Discovery Tool.

IT Inputs

Gather information on last fiscal year's strategy. Particularly information on:

• IT goals
• Specific IT initiatives/projects completed
• Project start and end dates
• Metrics and targets and progress made toward them
• Last fiscal year's budget information
• Organizational structure

Build an IT Strategy for a Local Government

Phase 1

Establish the Scope of Your IT Strategy

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• How to build IT mission and vision statements
• How to elicit IT guiding principles
• How to finalize and communicate your IT strategy scope

This phase involves the following participants:

• CIO
• Senior IT Team

To complete this phase, you will need:

Local Government IT Strategy Presentation Template

Use the Local Government IT Strategy Presentation Template to document the results from the following activities:

• Mission and Vision Statements
• IT Guiding Principles

1.1 Mission & Vision Statement

IT must aim to support the organization's mission and vision

A mission statement:

• Focuses on today and what an organization does to achieve its goals.
• Drives the organization.
• Answers: What do we do? Whom do we serve? How do we service them?

“A mission statement focuses on the purpose; the vision statement looks to the fulfillment of that purpose.”

A vision statement:

• Focuses on tomorrow and what an organization ultimately wants to become.
• Gives the organization direction.
• Answers: What problems are we solving? Who and what are we changing?

“A vision statement provides a concrete way for stakeholders, especially employees, to understand the meaning and purpose of your organization. However, unlike a mission statement – which describes the who, what, and why of your organization – a vision statement describes the desired long-term results of your organization's efforts.”

Source: Business News Daily, 2020

IT mission statements demonstrate the purpose of the IT function

An IT mission statement specifies the IT function's purpose or reason for being. The mission statement should guide each day's activities and decisions. It should use simple and concise terminology and speak loudly and clearly, generating enthusiasm for the organization.

A strong IT mission statement has the following characteristics:

• Articulates the IT function's purpose and reason for existence
• Describes what the IT function does to achieve its vision
• Defines the customers of the IT function
• Is:
  • Compelling
  • Easy to grasp
  • Sharply focused
  • Inspirational
  • Memorable
  • Concise

Sample IT Mission Statements:

• To provide leadership for the use of innovative information technology in a secure and efficient manner to enable and empower the city.
• To build a city by leading innovative change by providing digital and data-driven services to stakeholders (internal and external)
• To help fulfill organizational goals, the IT department is committed to empowering department stakeholders with technology and services that facilitate effective processes, collaboration, and communication.

IT vision statements demonstrate what the IT organization “aspires to be”

An IT vision statement communicates a desired future state of the IT organization. The statement is expressed in the present tense. It seeks to articulate the desired role of IT and how IT will be perceived.

A strong IT vision statement has the following characteristics:

• Describes a desired future
• Focuses on ends, not means
• Communicates promise
• Is:
  • Concise (no unnecessary words)
  • Compelling
  • Achievable
  • Inspirational
  • Memorable

Sample IT vision statements:

• Enable the city to be a digital center of the state
• Connecting departments with technology today while delivering innovative solutions for tomorrow
• To be a trusted advisor and partner in enabling innovation and growth through an engaged IT workforce
• IT is a cohesive, proactive, and disciplined team that delivers innovative technology solutions while demonstrating a strong resident-first mindset.

Derive the IT mission and vision statements from the organization's mission and vision statements

Begin the process by identifying and locating the organization's mission and vision statements.

Government Websites

Org. Strategy Documents

Government Leadership

Ensure there is alignment between the organization's statements and the IT statements.

Note: Mission statements may remain the same unless the IT department's mandate is changing.

Org. Mission ~ IT Mission

Org. Vision ~ IT Vision