Build an IT Strategy for US Government Organizations

Success for US government departments and agencies depends on IT initiatives clearly aligned to organizational goals, enabling IT excellence, and driving technology innovation.

Analyst Perspective

Align IT Strategy with organizational goals to maximize value creation

US Government IT departments work in an environment in which, although there may be broad federal/ state mandates (e.g. cybersecurity and zero trust), there often is agency/departmental guidance that results in an individualistic approach to implementation within the agencies and subagencies. Numerous external and internal factors affect their work, including multiyear budget cycles, compliance requirements driven by US Code variations among organizations, evolving technology trends, changing public expectations, and the need to adapt to ongoing legislative imperatives that are not aligned to previous program imperatives. Often, IT organizations are expected to deliver innovative solutions without a good understanding of the need to address legacy infrastructure and organizational issues while also dealing with the challenge of developing and retaining increasingly hard-to-find technology talent in a post-COVID workplace environment.

This complex operating environment presents unique challenges, making it imperative that government department IT leaders have a clear understanding of the organization's priorities, objectives, and resources and develop their IT strategy aligned with organizational goals. This will help ensure that their technology investments maximize value creation through improved operational efficiency, better cost management, and enhanced quality of services to the public and other stakeholders.

This blueprint and associated tools will provide you with a step-by-step approach to achieve an IT strategy that is in sync with your organizational objectives and will help establish IT as a strategic partner to the broader department and government.

Anubhav Sharma
Research Director, CIO Strategy
Info-Tech Research Group

What is an IT strategy?

• An IT strategy provides a holistic view of the current IT environment, the future direction, and the initiatives required to achieve the desired future state.
• An IT strategy is defined based on the organizational imperatives it enables, not the technology used to accomplish the organizational imperatives. It should support nimble, reliable, and efficient responses to strategic objectives.
• It guides the prioritization of initiatives and investments focused on driving organization value while ensuring alignment between IT and the broader organizational mission.
• An IT strategy is not a list of IT initiatives that have been developed in isolation and are not aligned with the organizational needs.

Introduction to the US Federal Government

Organizational Structure

• The US Federal Government is composed of three distinct branches – Legislative, Executive, and Judicial – whose powers are vested by the US Constitution in the Congress, the President, and the Federal courts, respectively.
• The Federal Government consists of 15 departments, multiple agencies, and a multitude of special offices and organizations created to execute the laws and regulations placed into law by the Congress of the United States.
• Although it may be viewed as a single entity, the departments, agencies, and special offices of the federal government are not subject to a singular management framework.

Federal Spending

• Is authorized and approved by the US Congress.
• Authorized appropriations may (and usually do) differ from appropriated funds, which increases the complexity of supporting government-wide IT initiatives.
• The Office of Management and Budget further subdivides the budget allocation to the federal agencies and offers spending frameworks for agency IT departments.

Decentralized IT

• Although it may appear that the US Federal Government has a uniform approach to IT strategy, the government is in fact an amalgamation of independent entities, operating and funded by independent legislation that inhibits a monolithic approach to IT. As such, various agencies/departments, although following broad IT strategy guidelines, implement IT governance in varying ways, which creates both challenges and opportunities.

Staffing Model

• US Office of Personnel Management provides guidance and sets policies on human resource management.
• Each department/agency develops and implements its own human resource strategy.

Introduction to the US State Governments

Organizational Structure

• State Governments in the USA are composed of three distinct branches – Legislative, Executive, and Judicial.
• The United States is a federal republic of 50 states, a federal district, and five territories.
• Each of the 50 states holds jurisdiction over a geographic territory, where it shares sovereignty with the federal government.

State Funding

• Main sources are taxes, fees, and federal grants.
• State revenue is gained through income, sales, property taxes, and fees for various services such as licenses and permits, etc.
• In addition, state governments received federal grants to support specific programs such as Medicaid, education, and transportation.

Decentralized IT

• Various agencies/departments, although following broad IT strategy guidelines, implement IT governance in varying ways, which creates both challenges and opportunities within their individual geographic and political environments.

Staffing Model

• Each state department/agency develops and implements its own human resource strategy while following broader guidance.

Info-Tech Insight

Understanding organizational context for your dept./agency as well as the broader federal/state government is important for creating an effective IT strategy.

Challenges & Opportunities in Government IT

Challenges

• Heightened resident expectations on delivery of government services due to shifts in attitudes since the pandemic and generational changes.
• Finite budget, requiring prioritization and hard decisions on where to spend.
• Adherence to stringent compliance requirements including security standards, accessibility requirements, and privacy laws.
• Modernizing legacy systems while continuing to ensure critical department/ agency support.
• Attracting, retaining, and upskilling top IT talent facing competition with private sector.
• Rise in cyberthreats and data breaches, enhancing need to implement robust security measures to protect sensitive government data.

Opportunities

• Lead digital transformation by leveraging new innovative technologies such as AI.
• Incorporate user-centric design thinking while developing services/products.
• Leverage data analytics to identify trends, gain insights into department operations, and make better data-driven decisions.
• Defend against cyberthreats by implementing zero-trust security shifting from securing network boundaries to a focus on verifying users, assets, and resources.
• Migrate to cloud computing to reduce costs, increase flexibility, and improve service delivery.
• Develop cross-department collaboration to focus on similar use cases for service modernization and thus, multiplying resource effectiveness.

Info-Tech Insight

Looking at challenges and opportunities will give you unique insights on key focus areas for your IT strategy.

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

A Government CIO has three roles: enable organizational productivity, run an effective IT shop, and drive technology innovation. Your IT strategy must reflect these three mandates and how IT strives to fulfill them.

1: Info-Tech, Management and Governance Diagnostic; n=89 since January 1,2021
2: Info-Tech, CEO-CIO Alignment Diagnostic; n=57 since January 1, 2021
3: CIO Journal, 2020

Info-Tech's approach

1. Establish the Scope of Your IT Strategy

   Establish the scope of your IT strategy by defining IT's mission and vision statements and guiding principles.

2. Review IT Performance From Last Fiscal Year

   A retrospective of IT's performance helps recognize the current state while highlighting important strategic elements to address going forward.

3. Build Your Key Initiative Plan

   Elicit the organizational context and identify strategic initiatives that are most important to the organization and build a plan to execute on them.

4. Define IT's Operational Strategy

   Evaluate the foundational elements of IT's operational strategy that will be required to successfully execute on key initiatives.

Info-Tech's methodology for IT strategy

Info-Tech's methodology for IT strategy

Blueprint deliverables

The IT Strategy Workbook supports each step of this blueprint to help you accomplish your goals:

Goals Cascade Visual

Elicit org. context and use the workbook to build your custom goals cascade.

Initiative Prioritization

Use the weighted scorecard approach to evaluate and prioritize your strategic initiatives.

Roadmap/Gantt Chart

Populate your Gantt chart to visually represent your key initiative plan over the next 12 months.

Key deliverable:

US Government IT Strategy Presentation Template

A highly visual and compelling presentation template that enables easy customization and executive-facing content developed based on Info-Tech's experiences working with key government members.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 8 to 12 calls over the course of 2 to 4 months.

Workshop Agenda

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Workshop Requirements

Launch Diagnostics

Launch the CIO Business Vision diagnostic.

Launch the Government Leadership (Executive Director/Program Director)-CIO Alignment diagnostic.

Launch the Management and Governance diagnostic.

Gather all historical diagnostic reports (if they exist).

Contact your Account Manager to get started.

Organizational Inputs

Gather org. strategy documents and find information on:

• Organization goals
• Organization initiatives
• Org. capabilities to create or enhance

(If this doesn't exist for your organization, contact your Info-Tech Account Manager to get started.)

Interview the following stakeholders to uncover business context information:

• Government Leadership/department head
• CFO

Download the Business Context Discovery Tool.

IT Inputs

Gather information on last fiscal year's strategy. Particularly information on:

• IT goals
• Specific IT initiatives/projects completed
• Project start and end dates
• Metrics and targets and progress made toward them
• Last fiscal year's budget information
• Organizational structure

Phase 1

Establish Scope of Your IT Strategy

Phase 1

1.1 Mission & Vision Statement

1.2 Guiding Principles

1.3 Finalize Scope

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• How to build IT mission and vision statements
• How to elicit IT guiding principles
• How to finalize and communicate your IT strategy scope

This phase involves the following participants:

• CIO
• Senior IT Team

To complete this phase, you will need:

US Government IT Strategy Presentation Template

Use the US Government IT Strategy Presentation Template to document the results from the following activities:

• Mission and vision statements
• IT guiding principles

1.1 Mission & Vision

IT must aim to support the organization's mission and vision

A mission statement:

• Focuses on today's activities and what the organization does to execute those activities.
• Drives the organization.
• Answers: What do we do? Whom do we serve? How do we service them?

"A mission statement focuses on the purpose; the vision statement looks to the fulfillment of that purpose."

A vision statement:

• Focuses on tomorrow and what an organization ultimately wants to become.
• Gives the organization direction.
• Answers: What problems are we solving? Who and what are we changing?

"A vision statement provides a concrete way for stakeholders, especially employees, to understand the meaning and purpose of your organization. However, unlike a mission statement – which describes the who, what, and why of your organization – a vision statement describes the desired long-term results of your organization's efforts."

Source: Business News Daily, 2020

1.1 Mission & Vision

IT mission statements demonstrate the IT organization's purpose

The IT mission statement specifies the organization's purpose or reason for being. The mission should guide each day's activities and decisions. The mission statements use simple and concise terminology and speak loudly and clearly, generating enthusiasm for the organization.

Strong IT mission statements have the following characteristics:

• Articulates the IT function's purpose and reason for existence
• Describes what the IT function does to achieve its vision
• Defines the customers of the IT function
• Is:
  • Compelling
  • Easy to grasp
  • Sharply focused
  • Inspirational
  • Memorable
  • Concise

Sample IT mission statements:

• To provide leadership for the use of innovative information technology in a secure and efficient manner to enable and empower the department.
• To lead innovative change by providing digital and data-driven services to stakeholders (internal and external).
• To help fulfil organizational goals, the IT department is committed to empowering department stakeholders with technology and services that facilitate effective processes, collaboration, and communication.
• Collaborate with our business partners to create the best experience for all veterans.

1.1 Mission & Vision

IT vision statements demonstrate what the IT organization aspires to be

The IT vision statement communicates a desired future state of the IT organization. The statement is expressed in the present tense. It seeks to articulate the desired role of IT and how IT will be perceived.

Strong IT mission statements have the following characteristics:

• Describes a desired future
• Focuses on ends, not means
• Communicates promise
• Is:
  • Concise; no unnecessary words
  • Compelling
  • Achievable
  • Inspirational
  • Memorable

Sample IT vision statements:

• To be a trusted advisor and partner in enabling innovation and growth through an engaged IT workforce.
• IT is a cohesive, proactive, and disciplined team that delivers innovative technology solutions while demonstrating a strong stakeholder experience mindset.
• World-class provider and trusted partner enabling department's transformation into a leading prudential regulator.
• To become a world-class organization that provides a seamless, unified veteran experience through the delivery of state-of-the-art technology.