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Executive Summary
The e-Ontario initiative, a common shared services organization provides hardware, networking, datacenters and telephone systems for all ministries. It operates on a charge-back basis, with no funding of its own, emulating an efficient, effective, private sector model of recovery.
David Nicholl, the corporate CIO for the Government of Ontario not only supports the province's I&IT organization, a large and complex group of internal customers, but also the operational underpinnings for a vast array of public services - everything from social assistance programs, to ServiceOntario, to online births, deaths and marriage registrations, to helping police catch the bad guys. All of this is done through a wide variety of technologies and business processes.
A key area of focus for Nicholl is meeting internal client expectations - delivering what ministries need, when they need it, in the most effective and efficient way possible.
In Ontario, I&IT is organized around eight clusters of like ministries, each of which has three responsibilities - application development and support around business solutions; providing service management to the business users; and information management, each with their own infrastructures, centralized into a single shared-services organization, moving about 800 people.
The help desks, desk-side support, and all of the server support was consolidated, allowing for virtualization in a big way. Over the last two-and-a-half years, over 1,000 servers have been removed from a total population of about 5,500 to 6,000.
Case Study Highlights
- 1. Ontario’s 13 million citizens get good service from the state via its IT infrastructure, but the local government wanted to do more.
- 2. So, the corporate CIO for government of Ontario took up a business approach to government IT.
- 3. Consolidating the entire infrastructure allowed for virtualization, further saving costs.
New Directions in Modernization
By 2013, there is a strategic plan to advance the agenda of modernizing I&IT and aligning it with business directions. Development of enterprise applications is another means of significantly reducing costs. I&IT is now moving on to other areas of standardization, such as case management and registration systems. An enterprise approach to online authentication will help reduce costs, the risk of duplication and security gaps, and accelerate application development.
Nicholl and the I&IT organization are also looking for a standardized solution to information management across the Ontario government. Sincedriving much of the change agenda is an aging application portfolio, Secretary of the Cabinet Shelly Jamieson and the Government's previous CIO and current Deputy Minister of Government Services, Ron McKerlie, understand the strategic importance of upgrading the Province's applications.
Striving for Project Excellence
I&IT organization has introduced project gating and regular quarterly report backs. The organization has also successfully implemented a project management Centre of Excellence, to drive the development and implementation of project management and help project teams take on new techniques, methodologies and tools.
With enterprise-wide tools and process, all projects will be approached in a common way across all clusters and the infrastructure organization. That's especially important because so many projects are now done for a cross-section of ministries, rather than a single ministry.
Good governance has been an important factor in I&IT's success in the Province. At the top of the governance pyramid is the I&IT Deputies Committee (IITDC), co-chaired by Nicholl and the Ministry of Revenue Deputy Carol Layton. Composed of key Deputy Ministers from across the Ontario government, it provides strategic direction, ensures alignment of I&IT with government business directions, provides leadership in certain areas, and ensures that information technology is used to full effect in supporting public service transformation. The governing body of the I&IT community is the Information Technology Executive Leadership Council (ITELC), chaired by Nicholl and comprising the CIOs of the various clusters, along with the corporate chiefs responsible for Infrastructure, Strategy, Technology, Information and Privacy and Security. ITELC is an integral part of everything that the I&IT organization does.
Reporting to ITELC is the Solutions Directors Leadership Committee (SDLC), in which all of the business solutions directors, who work for the cluster CIOs, come together with their colleagues from corporate areas to discuss matters relating to their level of operations. ITELC delegates items to SDLC and receives reports from the committee on solutions issues. On the service management side, the IT Service Management Leadership directors from the clusters and corporate areas meet.
A Place at the Table
When asked what issue he might give top priority to, Nicholl says: "There are many things, but if I had to sum it all up, I'd say it's ensuring that IT is closely coupled with our business as a contributor to our ministries' strategies and directions. IT has to be at the table with the key people who are directing where those businesses are going. If we weren't, it would give me cause for concern."
Says Nicholl, "Moving forward we are focusing on improving service levels - making services more accessible, reliable, and cost effective for our internal and external clients, and maturing the framework that we've established."
Nicholl sums it all up by saying, "With one eye on stabilization, the other focus is on modernizing applications. Key to I&IT modernization will be working with our business partners to better meet business objectives. In the end, our goal is to be a service-centered organization. We are focusing on better delivering services internally to ministries, as well as externally, making it easier and simpler for to the citizens of Ontario to obtain government services".
The Person Behind It
“It’s like any IT organization anywhere. If you get out of step with what your business is doing, then you’re going to be in serious trouble because you won’t be delivering what they need in a timely a
