The California Department of Technology (CalTech) on Friday released its Strategic Plan 2014 Update, pledging to revamp its procurement process, better train IT teams and be transparent about the challenges of large IT projects.
CalTech Director Carlos Ramos said information technology and social media have changed the way Californians do "business, communicate with each other, access and process information, and consume entertainment.”
“Technology is a powerful tool that provides the individual with convenience, access, choice, and control," Ramos wrote in the plan’s opening pages. "It is altogether appropriate then that any plan seeking to provide strategic guidance to state government in making its investments in technology be focused on serving Californians in a manner that also provides that same convenience, access, and choice.”
Specifically, the document entitled "Serving 21st Century Constituents" states the department would work to implement lessons learned from the suspended MyCalPAYS project.
California public sector workers and citizens will be allowed to see the challenges in the large state IT projects and how the department proposes to fix the issues. For example, the department formed the Consulting and Planning Division late last year, which intends to reorient any future projects getting off track.
CalTech also plans to draft a Model IT Project Template to include all the new elements the department will incorporate into the revamped procurement process: a project with a strong business case, a clearly phased approach, a pre-qualification process for bidders and parallel processes where possible.
Other department objectives include establishing a Project Academy to train IT project teams on best practices and lessons learned, continuing work on the public sector cloud service CalCloud and making more government services, information and transactions available online and mobile accessible.
Read the entire strategic plan here.
