Public Services Organization - IT Strategy

The organization plays a vital role in serving public services to infrastructure, economic players, and citizens. Management must fulfill their legal mandate of offering these services while efficiently using resources and budget.

Corporate IT plays an essential role in enabling the serving of these public services. In their strategic considerations, the organization split its IT delivery capabilities in keeping selected capabilities in-house while moving other capabilities to a dedicated external IT service provider many years ago.

Over the years, the organization collected experience on which elements work well in the IT delivery split and which parts might have to be rethought. In addition, the overall ambition of the organization for a digital transformation drives the rethinking of many business processes to reconfigure, standardize and automize selected business processes as much as possible. Technology innovations and trends such as cloud, robotics process automation, no/low code platforms up to applying ML/AI-enabled business logic support the feasibility of such a large endeavor.

So, the CIO and his corresponding board member have started to work on a new long-term IT strategy to position the IT function for the future. This IT strategy should include considerations on strategic sourcing, new collaboration models between business - IT - external IT service providers, new paradigms such as agile working, and innovative technologies. 

The goal of the project was to develop a new long-term IT strategy in times of digital transformation, cost optimization and consolidation, considering the following key points in particular:

• Align with the updated corporate strategy and the legal mandate
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of the current IT landscape, the IT operating model as well as the context of architecture, IT sourcing, the project portfolio, and business / IT alignment
• Understand the strengths, weaknesses and the potential of the external IT service provider
• Derive scenarios for the long-term strategic IT sourcing mix, including guiding principles and critical success factors
• Investigate the potential of new collaboration models between business - IT - external IT service providers, new paradigms such as agile working, and innovative technologies such as cloud, robotics process automation, no/low code platforms up to applying ML/AI-enabled business logic support

The following approach has been taken to develop a new long-term IT strategy in times of digital transformation, cost optimization, and consolidation:

• Settings session(s) with the CIO and the responsible board member
• Interviews with selected stakeholders from business functions, IT, and the external IT service provider
• Analysis of the existing IT strategy and key documents, as well as a briefing workshop series with the IT executives
• Development of an updated IT vision and guiding principles
• Development and discussion of potential long-term scenarios for the strategic IT sourcing mix
• Design of a long-term target picture, depicting key elements and formulating vision, requirements, and the road to reach the target state
• Derive a strategic roadmap in relation to the long-term IT strategy
• Finalization of the formal IT strategy and presentation to the board

The project length for developing the new long-term IT strategy was approximately 12 months.