City of Kawartha IT group adapts to rapid growth

IT leader Kari Kleven leverages Info-Tech expertise to build IT performance and value

Located just a short drive northeast of Toronto, the City of Kawartha Lakes is a sprawling rural municipality that features picturesque farmland and more than 250 lakes and rivers. Home to some of Canada’s most popular cottage country destinations, the City is the result of an amalgamation of 16 townships that span more than 3,000 square kilometers.

Witness to that amalgamation 20 years ago was Kari Kleven, one of only two IT resources at the time for the entire region. Now the Corporate Services Manager, Information Technology, at the City of Kawartha Lakes, Kleven recalled one of the difficulties the new municipality faced: “When we amalgamated, there was very little broadband in the area, which made it difficult for the City to provide services on a consistent basis. The first few years were spent helping the remote offices get access to the same applications and technology that we have in city hall.”

Building an IT department from the ground up was no small task. Not long after the amalgamation, Kleven began looking for external guidance and discovered Info-Tech Research Group. At the time, Info-Tech offerings included the best-practice research, templates, and methodologies that the City needed to help guide efforts and build services where none had existed. Kleven commented on the City’s evolving IT needs: “Over the years, the whole technology landscape has continued to develop. The different departments started to welcome the opportunity for technology to change the way that they do their business.” Over time, the relationship with Info-Tech also evolved to include the company’s expanded services such as workshops, guided implementations, and diagnostic tools, all designed to develop an impactful IT strategy and improve IT performance.

Supporting business strategy with IT governance

As the IT function at the City of Kawartha Lakes grew from its original team of two to a robust department that supports the entire organization, Kleven identified the need to align IT decisions and activities with business strategies. She turned to an Info-Tech workshop, “Improve IT Governance to Drive Business Results,” for guidance. The initiative led to the creation of an IT Steering Committee that ensures IT priorities support the organization as a whole. Kleven noted the value of the activity: “The Info-Tech IT Governance Workshop led us to think about things in a new way. The perception had always been that IT was making decisions on its own. That has changed significantly with the IT Steering Committee – it has given IT an aura of credibility.”

“The Info-Tech IT Governance Workshop led us to think about things in a new way. The perception had always been that IT was making decisions on its own. That has changed significantly with the IT Steering Committee – it has given IT an aura of credibility.”

- Kari Kleven, Corporate Services Manager, IT, City of Kawartha Lakes

Managing stakeholder satisfaction with Info-Tech diagnostics

Understanding how the rest of the organization perceives IT performance is an important part of Kleven’s role in meeting the needs of the business. To measure stakeholder satisfaction with IT, she enlisted Info-Tech’s CIO Business Vision survey. “The Info-Tech diagnostic resources are one of the things I really like. The CIO Business Vision survey provides some really valuable comments. We have used the survey results as the basis for meeting with departments, discussing what the priorities are, and informing them of the responses that we received from their staff. When we look at the scores, we do believe that they’re a true reflection of the health of the different services that we offer,” said Kleven.

Planning for the unexpected with Info-Tech’s DRP resources

To help the City of Kawartha Lakes respond effectively to unplanned events, Kleven added business continuity and disaster recovery plans (DRP) to her list of priorities. With limited DRP experience, she turned to Info-Tech’s DRP Workshop and Guided Implementation to help lead the team through the planning process. She noted, “We recognized that we needed a formal approach to be able to respond to a disaster, but another driving force was that insurance is difficult to obtain if you don’t have a disaster recovery plan. We wanted to get ahead of that.” Kleven added, “Working with Info-Tech on a DR plan was very valuable – I would say it’s almost at the top of the list of best experiences with Info-Tech Research Group. We came out of that workshop with definite improvements in our DRP maturity.” Kleven also kicked off business continuity planning with Info-Tech’s “Develop a Business Continuity Plan” Workshop.

Best-practice framework drives software selection efficiency

Always striving to improve IT efficiency and effectiveness, Kleven and her team recently participated in Info-Tech’s Rapid Application Selection Framework Guided Implementation. The guidance was designed to provide a formal methodology to improve and accelerate the City’s selection of software applications. “It was very helpful because not everybody had gone through software selection processes in the past. It was a good learning opportunity for people to understand why we need to do things a certain way and to have more confidence that the process will yield a better result. The Info-Tech analyst was very good at explaining it to us, talking to us about where we were at, and stepping us through it in a very methodical and sensible fashion,” said Kleven.

“It was very helpful because not everybody had gone through software selection processes in the past. It was a good learning opportunity for people to understand why we need to do things a certain way and to have more confidence that the process will yield a better result."

- Kari Kleven, Corporate Services Manager, IT, City of Kawartha Lakes

Supporting IT with a long-term partnership

Throughout the years at the City of Kawartha Lakes, Kleven has counted on Info-Tech’s constant support for all their IT needs. She commented on a recent engagement: “I’m always amazed when we have meetings with our analyst that he can recall conversations we had a month or two months ago. It makes it feel like a partnership because he’s really listened and has a very good grasp of what the current situation is and what we’re trying to do. Info-Tech is like an extension of our organization.”

Reflecting on her experience managing a growing IT department, Kleven had this advice for IT leaders: “If you need to do something to mature your IT organization, to make it function better, to gain more credibility in the organization, then leverage your relationships with peers, access education, and use services like Info-Tech Research Group. If there’s a gap, you’ve got to address it.”