Technology Governance

All technology purchases are coordinated through Information Services per the City’s Technology Purchasing Administrative Order. This policy has been developed for the purposes of:

• ensuring that technology acquisitions are aligned with City and Council goals;
• facilitating fiscally responsible technology spending that supports effective implementation, utilization, maintenance and replacement of systems;
• ensuring that technology implementations are in alignment with the organization’s security policies, applicable laws and security standards as set by governing agencies.

In order to meet these enterprise focused goals and because technology requests often exceed available budget and staffing resources, the Information Services Steering Committee (ISSC) was formed.  Information Services (I.S.) relies heavily upon the team for assistance in prioritizing technology investments and projects.

The ISSC, which is comprised of director-appointed representatives from each City department and is chaired by an I.S. Management representative, begins work early in the City’s bi-annual budget process to collect, analyze, and prioritize technology projects for budget submittal. The team is also an important resources for ongoing support in project analysis and selection throughout the year. During the budget process, ISSC team members engage departmental staff, working with I.S. liaisons to analyze technology needs in their own departments for the upcoming two year budget period. Each team member submits a number of new technology requests to Information Services, which are then packaged and presented to the entire ISSC for workshop review and discussion. The team works together to prioritize proposed technology projects, focusing on needs, as well as, City and Council goals. The result of their work is technology packet, to be presented to the City Manager, that outlines which projects the team recommends be presented to council for budget approval.

The Information Services Steering Committee’s dynamic is a productive one that offers an effective mechanism for ranking technology projects. The many benefits that the organization has realized from this approach include:

• Departments have the opportunity to see enterprise systems that may not yet be utilized in their departments, but that they may be able to potentially leverage for their own technology service needs.
• All departments are able to participate in technology decisions from an enterprise wide perspective, lending to an awareness of and a focus on the most critical technology needs for the organization as a whole.
• Each department is able to creatively engage in enterprise wide project planning, which facilitates system integration and data sharing to produce efficiencies and improve service.

The benefits realized from the ISSC directly support the organization’s goals for fiscally responsible and citywide technology planning. In addition, this transparency in technology approach facilitates collaboration and information sharing that takes a bit of the mystery out of technology decision making for all city departments.