For localities to succeed in the age of digitization, information technology (IT) must be transformed from order-taker to strategic business partner, and individual local departments need to gain more control over the IT they consume.

Simply put, traditional IT is dying and a new partnership model is taking its place. This means IT and the departments it serves become partners, with departments taking on a much greater role in designing, building, and exploiting the technology, platforms, and data they need to perform their core functions and succeed.¹

A New Model

This shift focuses attention on the future role of the traditional IT organization. The centralized IT department needs to provide consistent, overall strategic guidance and security, as well as procure and deliver all back-office solutions.

It also needs to act as an integrator and help plan the underlying architecture and operating model. Finally, IT needs to provide governance and digital ethics mechanisms going forward.

The continuing trend toward technology as a service, including cloud computing and the increase in virtualized, configurable, and scalable technology services, has transformed how IT is sourced, acquired, and consumed. It has made it much easier to plan for and acquire technology. As my team says, it's so easy, even a CIO can do it.

Technology as a service is a technology-delivery method that treats IT as a commodity, providing a community with exactly the amount of hardware, software, and support that it needs, when it's needed, for as long as it's needed, at a negotiated monthly fee. In this context, IT encompasses all of the technologies for creating, storing, exchanging, and using organizational data.

Shared Accountability

The new partnership model leads us not only to hybrid business and technology roles but also shared ownership and accountability. This helps build and strengthen the relationship—respect, appreciation, and trust—between departments.

To start, any gaps in capabilities, processes, and talent need to be identified, and career development and recruiting efforts, including job descriptions, may have to be revamped to meet the needs of the new design. This can be completed by performing a job analysis and skill assessment relative to each position description, as well as assessing what is referred to as the "digital dexterity" of all organizational staff.

The job analysis and skill assessment are focused on the manual and digital tools needed to perform the job, and the skill assessment determines how well staff members perform the function of their jobs using the most appropriate tools. Gartner, Inc. defines digital dexterity as the cognitive ability and social practice needed to leverage and employ various types of media, information, and technology for advantage in unique and highly innovative ways that optimize personal and business value.²

The assessment will help identify technology IQ and process knowledge, as well as help facilitate professional development opportunities. The assessment can then be incorporated into hiring practices and updated as needed for each position.

Through the assessment process, one will likely identify process and technology champions, as well as individuals who are operations champions in the three categories of process, technology, and operations, who are most adept at performing the processes and only interested in using the technology for the purpose of getting work done.

This is important because each type of champion is equally important for achieving operational and strategic aspirations. Process and technology champions can be leveraged to grow and transform the organization. Operations champions, however, leverage the processes in place to run the community on a daily basis and deliver service to constituencies.

Naturally there will be situations where each type of champion will be leveraged to run, grow, and transform the organization. The objective is to identify strengths and interests of individuals so they can be placed in positions to achieve both personal and business aspirations.

Each discipline and profession represented in the community will have an individual or team responsible for keeping the pulse of current trends, as well as the tools and technology used in their field.

A Sea Change

According to experts at IT research and advisory companies Forrester and Gartner, each organization and each department is an IT organization because of the impact technology has on people's daily lives.

Over time, what were traditionally considered IT job functions like writing queries for reports (reporting and analytics), performing geographic information system (GIS) analysis, and managing projects have migrated from the back office to the front, becoming a function of a position based on organizational need.

GIS, for example, was a specialized field only 12 years ago. Local governments had GIS departments performing all spatial analysis and creating all the maps. Today, analysts in many police departments use GIS to create predictive and reflective models to analyze crime incident data.

A finance officer may be the project manager for enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, and utility departments write their own queries and work with a machine learning startup leveraging predictive analytics to lock in rates prior to a demand charge event. The list goes on and on.

Leveraging this partnership model, Westerville, Ohio, will formally begin the job analysis and skill assessment stage late in 2016, starting in the planning and development department and systematically moving to all 12 departments. IT staff will maintain, change, or take on new functions as needed, no different than any other city department.

Endnotes and Resources:

¹ Adapted from Michael Cook, Aveek Guha, Ahmad Filsoof, 2013. The Death of Traditional IT and the Rise of a New Partnership Model. Strategy& (formerly Booz & Company).

² Nick Ingelbrecht, Mike Gotta, Don Scheibenreif. 2015. Defining Digital Dexterity—The Core Workforce Resource for the Digital Business. Carter, Inc. G00277849.