N.Y. CIO releases statewide IT strategic plan

The New York State Chief Information Officer and Office for Technology recently released the three-year road map for the state’s information technology strategy. In a report, the CIO/OFT outlined its Statewide Enterprise Information Technology Strategic Plan for implementing an efficient, responsive and comprehensive strategy to deliver improved, cost-effective government services through the use of IT.

Governor David Paterson said the IT Strategy was important not only for the well-being of New York residents, but for the future economy as a whole.

“The Enterprise IT Strategic Plan aligns with the needs of our citizens and businesses and outlines initiatives in state government necessary to deliver more cost-efficient services,” Gov. Paterson said in a statement. “New York must stay at the forefront of the new innovation economy and technology is vital for us to achieve that goal.”

The Statewide Enterprise IT Strategic Plan is meant to set goals and objectives so the state can leverage technology to help protect disenfranchised populations, build the state’s innovation and digital economy, reduce state spending, and educate the state workforce, the report said. The pie chart below shows how the state will divvy up its $3 billion in IT investments as submitted in the 2008 Annual Technology Plans and Addenda from approximately 90 State agencies and authorities.

“The New York State Enterprise IT Strategic Plan ensures state agencies are focused on the delivery of ever improving systems and services that are high-value with high return,” Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, New York State CIO and Director of OFT, said in the report.

New York Deputy CIO Rico Singleton said the collaborative effort will ensure agency and IT cohesiveness in building an innovative and digital economy.

“The planning effort and stakeholder outreach was unprecedented and included enterprise-wide technical experts, senior management from state agencies, authorities, local governments, members of the executive chamber, and the IT provider community,” Mr. Singleton said.

In an effort to further that ongoing stakeholder outreach, New York’s CIO/OFT launched Empire 2.0 this summer. Empire 2.0 is a host of Web 2.0 tools meant to create interest, disseminate information and bring groups of experts together to work on some of the state’s IT challenges. The CIO/OFT wiki has four draft enterprise policies, ranging from IT Support and Remote Access, to Internet Domain Registration for State Government Entities.

And although the wiki was not used in this release, Angela Liotta, Communications Director for CIO/OFT said they were still promoting the wiki along with other features of Empire 2.0, like New York State Tech Talk.

“We started the IT Strategic Plan at the beginning of the year,” Ms. Liotta said, “before the wiki became available…in June.”

But by visiting the Wiki Community Portal, one can glimpse at how the next Enterprise IT Strategy might come together. The Community Portal is where CIO/OFT officials can gather information to help them put together “pre-policy.” So far the portal is broken into for categories: Collaboration and Governance; Project Management; Metrics and Performance Measurement; Security and Data Protection.

To read the Statewide Enterprise IT Strategic Plan, click here.

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