Table of Contents

    Executive Summary

1. The Role of IT

1.1 The IT Portfolio

1.1.1 Applications

1.1.2 Infrastructure

1.2 IT Department Strategy

2. IT Department Mission and Vision

2.1 Mission

2.2 Vision

2.3 Core IT Strategies

3. IT Strategic Plan

3.1 IT Governance/Principles

3.2 IT Infrastructure

3.3 Shared Applications Initiatives

3.4 Departmental Applications

3.5 Operations Support and Management

The purpose of this document is to outline a strategic plan for the City of El Paso’s Information Technology (IT) requirements. It is the intent of the City Manager’s Office to tightly align its IT requirements with the strategic plan of the City now in development. Therefore this is a working document, which focuses on core issues relevant to all the departments’ technology needs.

As with any government entity, the primary mission of the City of El Paso municipal government is to provide efficient, cost-effective and reliable services to the residents, visitors and business community. Information technology is an integral component in delivering on this mission by assisting the various departments to utilize technology to deliver these services in a way that best meets the needs of the community. The increasingly ubiquitous access to information available through the Internet and other advanced communications technologies further allows the City to empower its employees and citizens in a way that truly revolutionizes how services are delivered.

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A consolidated IT department was created within the City of El Paso governmental organization in 2001 from IT staff and resources that had serviced individual City departments separately up to that point.

The role of this consolidated IT department is to provide centralized IT solutions and services to all city departments while improving customer satisfaction as well as employing economies of scale by leveraging a common IT infrastructure. The IT Department comprises of about 50 personnel responsible for supporting all IT requirements within the City of El Paso.

The role of IT at the City of El Paso encompasses the following areas:

• Management of the IT Portfolio
  
  • Applications
  (Shared and Departmental)
  
  • Infrastructure
• Operational Support
  
  • Network management, support, and data security
  
  
  • Help desk (end-user support)
  
  
  • Software support (development and deployment)
  
  
  • End-user training
• Departmental IT Support


• Application support


• Support departmental IT related initiatives, including evaluation and procurement, deployment and operation support
• IT Governance


• Standards, policies and procedures


• Disaster recovery planning


• IT project management

The following organizational chart outlines all of the City’s Departments that the IT Department must support (Figure 1).

  Figure 1 - City of El Paso Organizational Chart

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The values of an infrastructure lie in its ability to quickly and economically enable the implementation of new applications, which in turn generate business value. The benefits provided by infrastructure investments include: Improved business integration Business flexibility Reduced IT costs and reduced marginal cost of business unit’s (departmental) IT Standardization
	Figure 2- The IT Portfolio Pyramid

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Applications are the tools that provide the primary value to an organization. These tools can be categorized in two classes:

• Shared – applications that are shared by the entire organization or across multiple departments (e.g. PeopleSoft, E-Mail)


• Departmental– applications that meet department-specific needs and requirements (e.g. Police Department Records Management Systems)

Infrastructure encompasses the common elements upon which users rely for reliable and efficient access to shared or local applications and therefore to information and services.

Primary components of infrastructure include:

• Shared IT Services - such as local- and wide-area-networks for connectivity, centralized data storage systems and backups and centralized data centers.
• Human IT Infrastructure - the personnel with the knowledge, skills and experience to implement and maintain IT systems, applications and infrastructure. This also includes the policies and procedures that ensure reliable and secure functionality of systems.
• IT Components - the commodities necessary for a successful IT infrastructure such as computers, servers, operating systems and desktop productivity software.

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The City Manager's office outlined and defined specific strategic objectives for the IT department for the Fiscal Year 2006, and subsequent budget years in order to better align and manage the City's IT assets. In developing an IT strategy that would allow the IT department to fulfill this mandate, the following efforts have taken or will take place:

Reevaluated IT department's Mission and Vision Identified business initiatives, needs, and issues for the IT Plan Obtained input from key stakeholders (Department heads) Identified obstacles to achieving the mission and vision Developed and validated the IT goals and objectives Refine and Present IT Plan to City Manager and IT Executive Committee Present and refine the IT Plan Begin implementation planning Figure 3 outlines the strategic planning methodology utilized during this process.

Figure 3 - The Strategic Planning Methodology

The IT Department conducted an interactive workshop with all Department Heads in order to help gather the strategic requirements of the City and their priority status in regards to the City's IT initiative. The following 7 areas of concern were highlighted during this workshop:

• Infrastructure/Bandwidth
• Project Management
• IT Coordination
• Department Specific Applications
• IT Training
• IT Responsiveness
• Quality of Service

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2.1 Mission

2.2 Vision

2.3 Core IT Strategies

In order to fulfill this vision, the following core strategies have been identified:

• IT Governance/Principles
• IT Infrastructure
• Shared Applications
• Department Specific Applications
• Operational Support Management

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3. IT Strategic Plan

This section outlines specific IT strategic initiatives in order to support the IT department’s vision as well as the needs and requirements of its internal (City departments and end-users) and external (citizens of El Paso) customers.

3.1 IT Governance/Principles

IT Governance is a key responsibility of the IT department for the City of El Paso. The primary function of the IT department in governance is to

• Define IT strategic initiatives
• Define & implement city-wide IT standards
• Define & implement IT policies and procedures
• Identify and support departmental IT requirements

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A common IT infrastructure is critical to providing a reliable and flexible consolidated communications system to support the City's applications needs.

Key components of the IT infrastructure include:

• Local- (LAN) and Wide-Area-Networks (WAN)
• Internet access
• Automated Tools (Workstations, laptops, etc..)
• Wireless LAN's
• Telephony (Voice)
• Mobile RF voice and data networks
• Centralized data storage utilizing Storage-Area-Networks (SAN's)
• Centralized data center(s) and server farms

The following strategic initiatives will be undertaken to enhance the IT infrastructure at the City of El Paso:

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The City of El Paso utilizes several enterprise applications that provide services to all departments. As these applications have become more critical to the day-to-day operations of the City, the IT department will continue to ensure the availability and reliability of these systems.

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A primary responsibility of the City’s IT department is to assist other City departments with the evaluation, implementation and support of department specific applications.

These are the City’s strategic initiatives in this arena.

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The IT Department is responsible with maintaining the existing infrastructure and in providing support to all existing requirements for City departments. A project management office is being established within the IT Department that will expand the communication and collaboration with City Departments on all IT initiatives and projects. Following initiatives will be implemented to solidify the IT support provided to the City’s business processes:

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The City has made great strides in consolidating IT staff and functions into a single IT department from what had been distributed IT staff for each individual department. Consolidation can be further improved in order to maximize the effectiveness of information technology spending and resources.

Funding for infrastructure upgrades have been tied to specific projects instead of being viewed as a valid initiative on its own. Subsequently, if funding for a particular project is cut, the funding for infrastructure suffers as well even though citywide infrastructure investments are critical to meet all current and future IT needs.

The IT department can and will do a much better job in communicating the need, benefit and value of major IT initiatives to City leadership to ensure buy-in and support of these initiatives. As with all of City government, the IT department feels the effects of current budget limitations and the resulting need to do more with the same money and resources.

While primary funding streams such as tax revenue may be declining, federal government spending in areas such as Homeland Security and Education (e-Rate) provide significant opportunities for funding of City IT projects through federal grants in these areas.

The City government faces significant challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified IT personnel. As the services provided by the department have grown in size and complexity the staffing has seen a proportional increase to match this growth. Outsourcing of services such as analysis and maintenance has and will continue to provide some assistance.

Progress made in accomplishing the goals and objectives listed in this plan will be documented throughout the year. The plan will be updated before the end of each Fiscal year (June) to accommodate any changes tied to the City’s budget process. With this approach, the City will continually be looking forward three years for planning and budgeting purposes.

It must be noted that one theme that has been repeated by virtually every contributing department is that information technology is no longer an “added” component to our processes, but rather an integral part of how the City does business.

Additionally, a Project Management website has been created. This will allow us to track and monitor all projects, short and long term, large or small, in order to better prioritize and manage the various initiatives outline in this plan.

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