OIT Leadership Undertakes IT Strategic Planning Process

By David Blocher, Office of Policy and Strategic Planning

The Office of Information Technology Leadership Team is working on an IT Strategic Plan to provide focus and direction for the organization. Sam McKeeman, from DOT, led a two-day workshop in late October to define the strategic planning process and to select a set of goals statements.

The workshop started with the group crafting and adopting the following mission statement that reflects OIT as an internal service unit that supports all of state government in providing services to the ultimate end users:

The Office of Information Technology exists to provide technology support to the businesses and programs of Maine State Government

The group then envisioned the ideal state of affairs to bring about by the year 2011. Although still in draft form, the following vision statement gives specific outcomes the leadership hopes to achieve:

"By the year 2011, Information Technology is viewed and measured by State agencies and the Legislature as an investment to improve government service delivery, not merely as an operating expense.

At that time, OIT:

  • is viewed by Maine state government agencies as
    • adding value to their delivery of services to the citizens and businesses of Maine
    • serving their remote users of computers well
    • an organization they have confidence in
    • providing leadership and assistance to eliminate technical silos so that systems can be appropriately integrated across agencies
    • important to include in their planning processes
  • attracts highly trained and motivated technical and management staff who enjoy the work they do
  • is a national leader and model for the management and provisioning of technology for state government
  • is an organization that local government entities want to partner with
  • utilizes standard processes and tools that have reduced risks and gained efficiencies in the delivery of IT services
  • celebrates having allowed no data breach for five years
  • operates the Maine Communications Radio Infrastructure which is working well for field units and emergency response entities at all levels of government
  • operates a redundant operations center to support business continuity
  • moves those OIT employees not stationed in agencies into a new office building

Sam then led several exercises around strategic lessons drawn from the current best seller, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. This helped the group to uncouple from their everyday pressures and concerns and to focus on longer term issues, opportunities and outcomes.

Working through a series of small group efforts, the team came up with the following five (5) strategic goals:

  1. Partner with business people to align information technology (IT) with business plans
  2. Improve the success rate of IT projects
  3. Protect IT assets by instituting industry standards and security procedures
  4. Improve the efficiency and delivery of IT services
  5. Invest in staff to sustain and enhance a quality workforce

The team met again in early November to review the prior work and to move the process to the next stage. Goal groups were formed to take ownership to oversee the planning and achievement of each of the goals. In the coming weeks, each team will refine the goal wording if needed, analyze the underlying situation, and draft specific measurable objectives to accomplish the goal.

Please send any questions or comments to David Blocher, Director of Policy and Strategic Planning, 624-9502.