IT Director leads through change to build a new IT foundation

Growing municipality overcomes challenges with strong IT leadership

Located in southwestern Ontario, Canada, the Municipality of Chatham-Kent is a growing region of more than 100,000 residents in communities that range from urban centers to rural settings. At the helm of the municipality’s IT department is Catherine Fitzgerald, who serves the technology needs of the many departments that support this diverse region.

Catherine stepped into the role of Chatham-Kent IT Director at the end of 2019 with the goal of advancing the municipality’s corporate technology strategic plan. But, as Catherine noted, timing is everything: “Within my first three months on the job, the global pandemic landed on my desktop. But our foundation was really solid, so when the pandemic happened, we were able to pivot very quickly and professionally. I think we were one of the first municipalities in Ontario to go completely virtual on our council meetings.”

Translating strategy into action

As Catherine and her team rose to the challenges of COVID-19, they faced the additional complexity of an IT organizational restructuring that had been designed to better meet the strategic goals of the growing municipality. “With all the change that was happening, we reached out to Info-Tech for best-practice research and advice. We wanted to move initiatives forward and collaborate with experts, rather than do it all alone,” said Catherine. “Info-Tech has definitely helped our team get traction, especially in areas where we don’t have much experience.”

To further support the restructuring of the IT department, Catherine engaged Info-Tech’s guidance on IT Organizational Design to build a custom roadmap the team could follow. “Info-Tech helped us translate the strategic direction into a tactical plan,” explained Catherine. “We were able to define and explain what the new structure would mean for both IT and each business unit.”

Data management was another key element of the IT strategic plan, and a new data strategy team had recently been put in place. To help guide this new team, Catherine used Info-Tech’s Data Culture diagnostic program to gather feedback from the organization. “The Data Culture diagnostic results showed that the business units were aware of data challenges that were impacting their effectiveness – they couldn’t find the right information at the right time. It was affirming to see that there was broad support in the organization to make it better,” explained Catherine.

Experienced and practical advice

As Catherine leads her team through the challenges of change and growth, she has leaned on her Info-Tech counselor for guidance. “My Info-Tech Executive Counselor comes with a wealth of experience as a previous municipality CIO. He’s been able to help on the political and strategic side of what we should be doing and provide guidance on what other municipalities are doing,” said Catherine.

Although the pandemic made for a bumpy start to her tenure as IT Director, Catherine has been steadfast in her commitment to developing the IT organization to better support the many departments that serve Chatham-Kent residents. The journey has led to a number of Info-Tech engagements, as Catherine described:

• “The Info-Tech IT Change Management workshop helped us restructure the Request for Change process and governance and identify what we should be looking for whenever a request is submitted.”
• “Every organization has to decide what level of risk they are willing to accept. We used the Info-Tech’s Digital Risk Profile to identify which risk categories are of primary concern to the municipality. It absolutely saved us time.”
• “Using Info-Tech’s Application Portfolio Management framework to assess the value of the municipality’s applications is going really well. We’re trying to get a handle on the applications we support and how the organization feels about them.”

Building a future on partnership and dedication

Additional Info-Tech diagnostic programs are also on the agenda, including the CIO Business Vision and CEO-CIO Alignment surveys. Catherine is always eager for insights that can inform her strategies: “One of the corporate technology strategic plan directives was to be an innovation partner with our business units.” She noted that stakeholder perception of IT can be influenced by small things like a mouse not working: “So, we’ve always got to be sweating the small stuff while also trying to be an innovative partner and communicating the large successful organizational changes.”

As Catherine and her team focus internally to better position IT as a partner to the municipality, they are also eyeing new external concerns in the shape of AI, cybersecurity, and talent shortages. But Catherine is confident in their ability to meet every challenge head on: “We’ve got an amazing team here in Chatham-Kent. It’s a dedicated, hard-working team that’s passionate about the work they do – that’s one of our strengths.”