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National Human Services IT Resource Center

Template for an IT Division Strategic Plan

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(template)

 State of MYSTATE
Human Services Agency
IT division
STRATEGIC PLAN

Approvals

HS Agency Leadership

Date

IT Division Leadership

Date

IT Strategy Team Lead

Date

Overview:

This is a template to organize and present the HS IT Division strategic elements. The plan contains three main sections as follows:

  • HS Agency Business Direction. This section presents the overarching strategic direction of the higher-level organizations that the IT Division should complement.
  • HS IT Strategic Plan. This section presents the strategic direction for the IT Division. This direction provides the context for any ongoing or new IT initiatives.
  • HS IT Initiatives. This section identifies the individual IT initiatives that will be implemented. Each initiative may address one or more systems.

Samples for the strategic elements are provided only to aid in understanding the type of information provided


Contents

  1. HS Agency Business Direction
    1. HS Agency Vision Statement
    2. HS Agency Mission Statement
    3. HS Agency Goals
  2. HS IT Strategic Plan
    1. HS IT Vision
    2. HS IT Mission
    3. HS IT Guiding Principles
    4. HS IT Division Goals, Subgoals, and Performance Measures
    5. Critical Factors
  3. Initiatives
  4. Next Steps
  5. Appendices
  6. References

I. HS Agency Business Direction

This section of the HS IT Strategic Plan refers to the higher-level strategic directions that provide context for this plan, e.g., the HS Agency, State, or other strategic plans, as appropriate. This helps HS Agency and IT Division leadership determine whether the IT Division and HS Agency strategies are complementary. The sample includes three of the strategic elements for the HS Agency: Vision, Mission, and Goals. When necessary, lower-level subgoals (also called objectives) and critical factors can be included. The HS Agency strategic elements should be derived directly from the executive leadership, either through previously published reports, interviews, or workshops.

A.HS Agency Vision Statement

The HS Agency vision is an idealized and compelling view of a desirable and potentially achievable future position. A vision statement serves as a guiding theme, expressing the nature of the HS Agency and the intent for its future. The vision should be meaningful to individuals within and outside the HS Agency so that they may embrace it.

If necessary, additional descriptive material can be provided to elaborate on the HS Agency vision statements.

Sample:

HS Agency Vision
The HS Agency promotes and supports opportunities for the People of MyState (those that are most vulnerable) to help protect them from abuse and neglect and assist them in achieving and maintaining self-sufficiency.

B. HS Agency Mission Statement

The mission statements express the primary business of the HS Agency, its purpose and reason for being, without which it loses its rationale for existing. The mission statement clearly identifies the customer and the services being provided. The mission statement will conform to higher-level guidance. In the case of the HS Agency, this guidance can originate within the State or the Federal level.

If necessary, additional descriptive sentences can be provided to elaborate on the higher-level mission statements.

Sample:

  • The mission of the HS Agency is to design and deliver quality services that build strong families and communities and to help those we serve become self-reliant.

C. HS Agency Goals

These goals establish the general direction the HS Agency intends to pursue to achieve its Vision. They represent a decomposition of the Mission, expressed as action-oriented statements. Goals describe what will be achieved, not how. The HS IT Division strategic direction will support these goals in whole or part.

If necessary, additional descriptive material can be provided to elaborate on the Goal or Subgoal  statements

Samples:

  • Goal 1. Ensure that families have sufficient food, medical coverage, quality, affordable child care, and reliable transportation that enables them to work
  • Goal 2. Develop collaborative relationships between employers, local leaders and organizations, and faith-based and nonprofit community groups in order to combine their resources and talents to create jobs, support work, and make low-income neighborhoods more viable

II. HS IT Strategic Plan

This part of the HS IT Strategic Plan defines the overarching HS IT strategic direction. How this strategy supports the higher-level strategic direction should be addressed in the text, as needed.

A. HS IT Vision

The IT Division vision statement is an idealized and compelling statement of a desirable and potentially achievable future position. The vision should complement the HS Agency vision and mission. The vision should be meaningful to individuals within and outside the IT Division so that they may embrace it. It may address the products or services of the IT Division or the way the division will operate to deliver these.

If necessary, additional descriptive material can be provided to elaborate on the vision statements.

Sample:

  • The IT Division will provide technology solutions and related services to enable the HS Agency to achieve the highest level of Human Services by:
  • Investing in technology and developing partnerships to deliver effective HS solutions
  • Providing ready access to high-quality applications and databases that are easy to use, helping clients to help themselves to reach their goals for self-sufficiency
  • Quickly satisfying the automation needs of the HS Agency, reducing the time between when an automation need is recognized and a solution provided
  • Delivering innovative technology solutions within budgeted cost and schedule
  • Creating a collaborative and challenging work environment

B.HS IT Mission

The mission statements express the primary purpose of the HS IT Division. It clearly identifies the customer and the services being provided. The mission statement will conform to higher level guidance. In the case of the IT Division, this guidance can originate within the HS Agency, State or Federal Levels.

If necessary, additional descriptive sentences can be provided to elaborate on the linkage to the higher-level mission statements. Benefits that the HS Agency will obtain as the IT Division pursues its mission can also be indicated.

Sample:

  • The HS IT Division enables effective HS operations and the delivery of innovative public services by providing timely, efficient, and effective information systems and technical leadership to the HS Agency, Agency Partners, and Citizens.

C. HS IT Guiding Principles

A strategic plan for the IT Division needs to address not only the technology aspects, but the IT Division organizational culture. These Guiding Principles provide a structure for communicating what is important to the individuals within the division. This will guide their future actions.

Sample:

Underlying the HS IT's vision and mission is a commitment to the shared values of the HS Agency and the IT Division. These values define the IT's organizational culture and provide the guiding principles.

IT Division Guiding Principles

The HS IT Division will strive to:

  1. Understand the point of view of our customers and design and build technology solutions that satisfy their immediate and longer-term needs
  2. Provide technology solutions of the highest quality possible, providing a reliable and effective means to deliver HS Agency services
  3. Provide accurate, reliable, understandable, and timely information to our customers, constituents, and other stakeholders in an accessible manner
  4. Create useful, effective forms of collaboration in regulation, technology trends and usage, service delivery, and management
    • Maintain a work environment that encourages creativity, diversity, teamwork, accountability, continuous learning, a sense of urgency, enthusiasm, celebration of achievement, and the highest ethical standards

 

In addition to our organizational culture, these principles also guide the HS IT Division's technology choices.

Technology Principles

  • The long-term evolution of the systems within the HS Agency is an important criteria when making individual system design or implementation tradeoffs.Maintaining a long-term focus throughout the system definition and delivery process is essential to achieving the ability to adapt existing systems to emerging needs.

Commercial-off-the-shelf or previously developed and supported solutions, packages, components, or modules will be the first choice for implementing the systems, reducing time-to-deployment without significantly increasing life-cycle risk.

  • Dependence on vendor-specific solutions will be limited by adopting or establishing vendor-neutral standards as the basis for technology choices. When products cannot be found to fully support the standard, or a product has beneficial proprietary extensions, guidelines on how to encapsulate and apply these products will be established and followed.
  • Strategic relationships with vendors will be formed when their products are essential to developing or operating critical elements of the automated systems.
  • Systems will be capable of incremental growth without the need for significant reinvestment. The systems will economically scale up or down based on need.
  • Technologies will be adopted early where there is great potential for delivering innovative services with acceptable risk.

Parts of the technology infrastructure that offer our customers unique advantage (i.e., strategic) will be developed internally, while those parts that are not strategic will be outsourced or purchased, when available.

D. HS IT Division Goals, Subgoals, and Performance Measures

These few, well-chosen goals establish the general direction the IT Division intends to pursue to achieve its Vision. They represent a decomposition of the Mission, expressed as action-oriented statements. Goals describe what will be achieved, not how.

Subgoals are described for each goal. Subgoals are specific, measurable targets for improved performance. Subgoals can be monitored to track attaining the goal. Subgoals are action-oriented. They indicate what must be accomplished (to create, increase, decrease, remove, etc) how much is accomplished (quantity), when it must be accomplished (time frame), and by whom (organization, group, or individual).  The initiatives will achieve these subgoals in whole or part.

The Performance Measures establish key measurements for insight into progress. Realistic targets are established that take into consideration the current position (baseline), expected performance (what can realistically be achieved) and the target value. The measures provide management the ability to determine progress toward the subgoals so they can adjust either the strategy or the performance of the projects that compose each initiative. Performance measures may be based on those of the higher-level organizations - such as the HS Agency, deduced from the HS business direction stated in Section I.

If necessary, additional descriptive material can be provided to elaborate on the goal, subgoal, or performance measure statements.

Samples:

Goal 1: Provide clients and case managers integrated access to information and services available from the HS Agency as well as outside sources.

Movement from welfare to self-sufficiency necessitates that clients and caseworkers have ready access to a broad range of available services and information. A "common front-end" should allow case managers to design service plans that involve many service providers and not have to reenter identical information into multiple systems.

Subgoal 1.By Q1, 2002, IT Division will deploy an initial, Web-based portal where descriptions of existing HS services can be accessed and browsed by the general public (pamphlets, services, reports, forms).

Performance MeasureThe percentage of all HS-provided public information that is available through the portal

Subgoal 2.By end of FY 2002, all application forms will be available through the Web-enabled interfaces.

Performance MeasureThe percentage of all forms available through a Web-based front-end

Performance MeasureThe number of applications taken through the Web interface versus other means

Subgoal 3.By end of FY 2002, case managers will have integrated, online access to all information necessary for case management.

Performance MeasureThe percentage of all eligibility functions that are supported through the "common front-end"

Goal 2: Enable the automatic collection and exchange of information across a diverse set of systems and service providers.

To facilitate moving individuals to self-sufficiency, it is necessary that information be obtained and shared among a wide variety of independently managed organizations, such as employment, colleges, school districts, and community-based organizations. Agreements must be made on the sharing and use of the information. Legal and privacy concerns must be addressed.

Subgoal 1.By Q3 2001, establish an advisory committee of individuals representing the organizations that will exchange data. This committee will be responsible for reaching agreement on the information sharing standards (e.g., types of data shared, who has access to the data,  interfaces and message formats).

Performance MeasurePercent of affected organizations that are participating on the committee.

Subgoal 2.By Q2 2002, specifications for those standards the Advisory Committee indicates as key to data sharing are completed and approved.

Performance MeasurePercent of specifications approved

Subgoal 3.By end of FY 2002, all key information-sharing interfaces are operational.

Performance MeasureThe percentage of all identified key data sharing interfaces that are in use

Goal 3: Evolve a highly proficient and adaptable IT capability.

The HS Agency depends on automated solutions that the HS IT Division provides. The quality, cost, and timeliness of these solutions are a direct result of the processes that the IT Division executes. These processes must be capable of meeting rapidly changing needs in response to new challenges and opportunities. This goal addresses the need to continually improve the processes to make them more flexible and able to react to change quickly and to consistently achieve the timely delivery of high quality products.

Subgoal 1.By end of FY 2004, be able to predict, within 90 percent accuracy, the calendar time and work hours required to produce a high-quality, major application system; by end of FY 2005, reduce actual average calendar time and work hours by 20 percent.

Performance MeasuresThe expected versus actual performance for schedule, cost, size, and functionality

For application systems that are deployed, the number of defects that are detected and their severity over time

Subgoal 2.By Q3 2001, establish an effective technical and management training program for the IT Division staff and use this program to provide the essential skills and knowledge that the staff must have.

Performance MeasuresThe number of courses offered and survey results from those taking the courses gauging its usefulness to their tasks

E. Critical Factors

These are the few things that must be in place to achieve the goals. Some of these may be under control of the HS IT Division, others may not. Management of a critical factor will be allocated to individuals or groups that can take action to address one or more of the factors. These individuals or groups may be within or external to the HS IT Division. Critical factors may appear as risks to be managed in the HS IT Program Plans.

Sample:

Critical Factors
The following factors as essential to the success of this plan:

Job market competition for critical IT skills.

III. Initiatives

This section identifies and describes the initiatives that will be pursued. They further the mission and goals of the IT Division or the HS Agency. Initiatives can be of several types. Some are continuations, reduction, or expansion of initiatives currently underway. Others may be completely new. Initiatives can be prioritized to identify those that most support the strategic direction from others that, although necessary, may not be as critical.

This part of the Strategic Plan can identify IT initiatives led by the IT Division, as well as those assigned to other organizations. For example, establishing an HS Agency-wide training program for employee development may be led by the training department. Likewise, investigating the legal aspects of sharing data with outside organizations or vendor-partner relationships may be led by a separate department (e.g., legal or acquisitions).

The first cut at these Initiatives represents proposals to the HS Agency. Sufficient data should be provided so that the executive leadership can review and either approve, approve with changes, or disapprove the initiatives. Assumptions should be provided and clearly indicate any uncertainty, such as a range of costs or schedule. This includes stating assumptions on the technical and management approaches expected to be used to implement the initiative. Only detail necessary to gauge the cost-benefit should be provided.  Detailed technical and management approaches will be established by the HS Agency Technical Architects and the IT Program Staff.

Initiatives are described using the following template:

Name: Each initiative will have a unique description name.

Priority - The relative importance of the initiative, using the HS Agency or IT Strategic direction as the basis for establishing priority. The following scheme can be used:

Applicable Programs - The program(s) that the Initiative supports. An initiative must support one or more HS Programs (e.g., TANF, Child Support and Enforcement, Child Care, Child Welfare, Food Stamps, Medicaid)

Description - In a few sentences, characterize the essence of the initiative - what it is trying to achieve, and why.

Consistency with HS Agency Strategic Direction - In a few sentences, characterize how the initiative supports the HS Agency mission, goals, or subgoals.

Consistency with IT Division Strategic Direction - In a few sentences, characterize how the initiative supports the HS IT mission, goals, or subgoals.

Special Considerations - Characterize any important items to consider when determining to pursue the initiative, such as the impact of Federal matching funds on the HS Agency funding stream.

Time Frames - Characterize the time in which the initiative should produce a major result, or other temporal considerations - such as impending legislative changes or dependencies with other initiatives.

Budget Considerations - Detailed, reliable estimates cannot be made this early in the project definition process. But cost considerations will be of concern when determining feasibility to implement the initiative. Estimates are ballpark. Identify any estimating assumptions and uncertainty. Funding streams such as block grants versus advanced planning documentation (APD) funding should be identified.

IV. Next Steps

This plan should identify the follow-on actions that will be taken to implement and track to it. Detailed actions need not be provided, but the general direction and timeframe should be agreed upon by the stakeholders.

V. Appendices

This optional section may include background information that helps the reader of the plan correctly interpret the strategic elements. This may include, for example:  summaries of the analysis of the external, internal, or IT Division environments; organization chart; a description of the measurement system or processes used to gauge progress to the goals;  and a characterization of the strategic planning process that was followed.

VI. References

Reference to the source material used to prepare this plan can be provided, as needed. This includes references to the specific versions of the higher-level plans from which this plan is derived, such as those providing the Business Strategy (Section I). These items should be made available to individuals, as needed.


Last UpdateMay 4, 2005e -->