There is a common problem with states’ Information Technology (IT) strategic plans — there are often no statewide strategic “business” plans that would guide the IT organizations to strategize the support they can provide.
Echoing the California Government Operations Agency goals for civic service improvement, with Vision 2020, the California Department of Technology (CDT) has created a strategic plan that it hopes addresses the foundational building blocks needed to help individual lines of government business deliver their missions more effectively and efficiently. And while the CDT plan focuses more on human and process capabilities than on technology to build capacity in key areas, that is exactly the kind of assistance the lines of government business will need.
Governing magazine reported nearly a year ago on more than a dozen stubborn issues across the country that may also need to be addressed in the Golden State in the coming years. Chief among them are financial pressures that could happen here, in spite of continued growth in revenues forecast for the near term by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Trends that are seen across the country that would seem to have a greater-than-even chance of impacting California include:
- Funding decreases for big-ticket programs (such as Medicaid) that will shift state funds to cover the differences,
- Corporate tax cut objectives of the current federal administration that would lead to corresponding reductions in revenues, and,
- Continued increases in health and pension costs for state and local jurisdictions that are compounded by decreases in many local tax bases with the decline of brick and mortar retail; states will be asked to make up county shortfalls with increased frequency.
Innovation can certainly help with new ways to squeeze the best performance from systems while maintaining stability and adding flexibility to improve user experience. Knowing where improvements can occur and making those adjustments toward effectiveness and efficiency is not only cheap — it’s priceless. And it provides a solid platform on which future innovations can be built.
Improving efficiency and effectiveness can also help improve collaborative culture between business and IT. To get the most out of existing investments in technology, business and IT will have to do a better job of collaborating and sharing systems and data. And we have seen in the last few years that sharing data is less about technology and more about the perception of privacy and security.
Security is rightly a focus of this plan, and a sizeable component of the security equation focuses on culture, ethics and data management. While data management is not an IT domain (data management is the domain of the lines of government business), few lines of government business are acquainted with the processes, features, and benefits of structured data management practices. Helping lines of government business build capacity for data management is a remarkable opportunity to forge better relations between business and IT, and improve data security and integrity.
Better data management capacity can also create a channel for business-focused dialog to inform IT strategic planning, a highly desirable, if somewhat elusive symbiosis. There are a couple of shining examples of this across the country — there’s no reason why California can’t be one more.
