I’m writing a little series on Top 5s on various topics – I encourage you to write yours.
There’s lots of key documents that form a government agency’s IT operations.
Here’s my “Top 5”:
1 – IT Strategic Plan – every agency needs one. Sometimes they are shelf-ware, sometimes valuable. But they set the vision of where we are going.
2 –Enterprise Architecture – Not always enforced but EA helps us make decisions so we don’t have 10,000 different products that don’t work together. A great concept,
but hard to executre
3 – Exhibit 53 – List of the major government IT programs for the year – it is a wrap-up of the OMB 300s (budget and planning overview for key programs)..Note – this is for U.S. federal level
4 – Budget – Nothing tells the story better than the IT budget. Where is the money being spent. What part of IT is being
done out of IT
5 – Org Chart – To me, this is always the most helpful. How many people? Gov/contractor? What’s structure? Who is doing what?
What would you add?
Going to be SOMEWHAT Negative…
The IT strategic plan often just becomes a dusty document that someone in the corporate office breaks out for show and tell… I have worked in government organization where the IT department manager(s) were evaluated on how their tactical planning “meshed” with the strategic plan. NOW when that happens the plan means something…
EA: in
mostsome organizations seems to be strictly an internal IT document which has little bearing on reality.Exhibit 53 RELATIVELY new, at least to me, and few agencies really know how to leverage it
Budget: COULD be a useful tool but too often not shared enough to reduce or even properly identify
ALLMOST IT expenditures.Org Chart: Haven’t seen a useful/meaningful one for some 30 years, The excuse most often received “why we couldn’t possibly keep up such a thing” …