Information Technology Projects Overview

Information technology projects are discrete efforts that deliver unique products and services that cannot be addressed within a department's day to day operations. Information technology projects can originate at all levels of departments and organizations. Projects vary in scope, budget, technical complexity, dependencies, and stakeholders. Some projects affect only one department, and others involve multiple departments.

San Francisco City departments engage in information technology projects that improve critical service delivery to citizens, make government functions more efficient and keep departments compliant with Federal, State and local regulations. The fourteen departments interviewed for this analysis reported undertaking both large and small projects that included developing on-line reservations systems for park and recreational services, implementing accessible voting technology, streamlining building permit tracking, coordinating emergency management services, enhancing airfield inspection systems, and better coordinating service delivery to the city's homeless population. In addition, key City functions, like collecting taxes, case management for probation systems, issuing and managing building permits, and delivering healthcare at city hospitals rely on data systems that are designed, built, and upgraded through information technology projects.

To effectively manage information technology projects, City departments must first have the systems in place to prioritize project ideas and allocate necessary resources. Additionally, departments need to systematically approach and review project-specific information, such as business practice impacts, technological components, timelines for deliverables, and training and maintenance needs.

In order to achieve project goals, most projects should have (a) an executive who sponsors and owns the project; (b) a thorough business analysis review; and (c) integration of business process changes and appropriate technology solutions. Once these elements are agreed to, technical systems need to be designed and/or purchased, tested, deployed, tested further, and adjusted for issues that may arise during the project's implementation process. Next, end users must be trained on the new system, and a maintenance and operations process established.

Several City departments use various project management methodologies to manage their information technology projects. Each of the methodologies has its own strengths and weaknesses, and its own terminology and conventions. The particular methodology employed is less important than that the department has a methodology in the first place and adheres to it.

Prioritizing Information Technology Projects

Methods for prioritizing projects need to be established at three levels: citywide; inter-departmental; and intra-departmental. Because the City lacks an effective process to plan and prioritize information system projects, City departments implement projects independently, resulting in inconsistent practices and uneven distribution of resources.

Prioritization of Projects Citywide

The City does not currently have a working strategic vision or plan for information technology. Over the past ten years, a series of plans have emerged recommending that the City develop a citywide information technology governance framework, including guidelines for project management. The Committee on Information Technology has established a folio review system, which has changed several times over the past six years. A draft framework for a new system for prioritizing projects, which was released at the Committee's March 23, 2007 meeting, does not include any citywide technology goals and criteria for selecting projects that advance these goals.

Previous central review systems have focused on projects that exceed some financial threshold. For instance, in 1996, the Committee on Information Technology's Strategic Management and Planning Group began reviewing proposed information technology projects estimated to cost more than $3 million and less than $5 million. And a February 3, 2006 Department of Information and Technology Services memo to department financial and administrative managers outlined a new process for information technology project budget requests, requiring further information for those projects estimated to cost $500,000 or more. Reviewing only those projects which exceed a certain threshold amount (a) ignores the needs and opportunities associated with smaller projects, which may be necessary components for future, larger projects; and, (b) fails to capture large projects that are performed mostly with staff time, as staff time is not reported as a budget expense for an information technology project.

By contrast, the City should set out to prioritize projects and align technology with business practices needs across the City, regardless of estimated project costs. Prioritization should be based on a project's potential to meet citywide information technology goals, such as bringing services to citizens online; updating aging and at-risk software or hardware systems; and reducing redundancy in data stored between City departments.

Prioritization of Inter-Departmental Projects

Several departments within the City share information and systems for their primary business functions. Even within the small sample of departments studied for this report, information sharing was critical between several departments, including between City Planning, Building Inspection, and Fire; between the Treasurer-Tax Collector and the Assessor-Recorder; and between Fire, Public Health, Police and Emergency Management.

New information technology systems that streamline information flows between departments can reduce redundancy, data errors, and expenditures. However, embarking on projects to implement these systems takes a coordinated effort from all departments involved and a system for making decisions that may impact multiple agencies. Without committed project sponsors within each impacted department, it is difficult to reach agreement on how to proceed with complex project changes. When one department has an aging system that needs to be replaced, and is committed to moving forward with an information technology project, another department that depends on the same information technology system may not be prepared to engage in the planned project. In these situations, a facilitator with a citywide perspective can help get different departments engaged in appropriate planning for a project.

Inter-departmental Project Delays

Generally, funding for information technology projects shared by two or more City departments is appropriated in each department's budget, with inadequate processes to coordinate funding and project implementation between departments. Consequently, these projects can face significant inefficiencies and delays.

Implementation of the Permit Tracking System

For example, the Planning, Building Inspection and Fire Departments are all participating in the implementation of the Permit Tracking System. Implementation of the Permit Tracking System has been delayed for at least two years primarily as a result of (a) staff turnover in the Department of Building Inspection, the Planning Department, and the Department of Information and Telecommunication Services, which provided project management services, and (b) lack of coordinated planning. In 2005 the Planning Department conducted a business process review with an outside consultant to outline the project specifications but had to place the project on hold due to staff turnover in the Department of Building Inspection. In 2006 the Department of Building Inspection updated the department's portion of the Permit Tracking System without consulting the City Planning Department.

The Department of Building Inspection is the lead agency in developing the Permit Tracking System, which is based on the Department's business processes. The Department of Building Inspection and the Planning Department do not have a formal agreement on implementing the system, but staff from both departments are now meeting regularly with the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services, serving as an "automation" team responsible for identifying the best approach to meet the Department of Building Inspections business process requirements. The Department of Building Inspection will fund approximately two-thirds of the project costs, estimated to be as high as $10 million based on preliminary estimates, and the Planning Department will fund approximately one-third.

Lack of Information System Integration between the Offices of the Assessor-Recorder and the Treasurer-Tax Collector

Although the Treasurer-Tax Collector and the Assessor-Recorder rely on similar data, these departments do not currently have an integrated system. Rather, they exchange data every few weeks, which needs to be cleaned, re-structured, and analyzed by each department. The departments both note that they began to discuss an integrated system six years ago, but neither has committed to moving forward with such a project. Although the Office of the Assessor-Recorder received $500,000 in FY 2007-2008 for an inventory and analysis of its information technology systems and needs, the department does not anticipate integration with the Office of the Treasurer-Tax Collector in the short term.

Role of the Committee on Information Technology

The City does not have an effective mechanism to plan and coordinate information technology systems between departments even though City departments provided related public services and share business processes. This lack of coordinated systems is not only inefficient but impacts public services. The Committee on Information Technology should assist City departments in reviewing the key service delivery functions within each department to identify relationships and inter-dependencies between core information technology systems. Streamlining these processes could lead to a more efficient allocation of resources, although security concerns must be addressed, and departments must maintain discretion over the systems that affect their daily operations.

Prioritizing Projects Within Departments

Internally, departments often fail to prioritize information technology projects due to insufficient management support or inadequate budget resources. Frequently, updates to aging software and systems are delayed until products are at risk and no longer supported by vendors or warrantees. Further, departments' investments in information technology sometimes involve tradeoffs between core business functions - like service delivery - and administrative expenses.

Some departments have model systems for determining what projects would get done in a given year. As mentioned previously, Public Health has an organized information technology steering committee, comprised of senior executives throughout the department that meets to review technology project ideas, prioritize them for a given year, and authorize their implementation. With other departments, information technology and financial staff meet, generally during the budget-development process, to determine annual projects and needs. Information technology staff at most departments reported working with their respective departments' management personnel to discuss possible projects and improvements to their information technology systems.

Information Technology Project Management

Over the past six years, several reports have recommended that the City create and adopt project management standards and tools to guide project implementation in departments. The Committee on Information Technology, which is the City's primary entity for coordinating information technology processes citywide, has not yet developed these standards or communicated them to City departments. Instead, departments have developed their own project management tools with varying degrees of sophistication.

Citywide Project Management Standards and Tools

In 2000, the Legislative Analyst's Report 93Information Technology Within San Francisco94 recommended that the City develop information technology standards and policies and encourage departments to share their technological advancements. In 2001, a Public Technology, Inc. report entitled 93SWAT, Enterprise IT Report94 recommended that the City establish project management standards and modify procedures for enterprise information technology project evaluation. In 2002, a plan created by the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services to establish a Project Management Office explicitly placed responsibility for project management guidelines and resources for the City as the responsibility of the Committee on Information Technology. In 2007, the draft Technology Governance Plan created by the Committee on Information Technology assigned the task of developing project management standards and guidelines to its Quality Assurance Subcommittee. These project management standards and guidelines have not yet been developed.

Separately, the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services has developed and published guidelines and planning templates for use by its own project managers, but these tools have not been shared with City departments. Only one of the fourteen departments interviewed for this report had seen Telecommunications and Information Services' guidelines.

Project management training can help those tasked with completing a project identify issues early on, communicate project requirements to senior executives and avoid complications that can lead to increased project costs and slipping deadlines. When asked about training for project managers, departments report that the City offers a training class in Microsoft Project, a software tool designed to help managers identify a critical path for project tasks and identify and measure progress in project completion. Although this tool can help identify time-saving techniques in project implementation, City departments do not require the training for their project managers.

The larger issues of project management - identifying the scope of a project, aligning business needs to technical needs, building consensus and developing a workable plan - are not elements covered by Microsoft Project training. A few departments noted that funding for project management training is available from Local 21, and that project managers in their departments had taken advantage of this resource. For more consistent application of project management practices citywide, the City departments, in working with the Committee on Information Technology and the Department of Technology and Information Services, should extend project management training to non-information technology staff, such as administrative and financial managers, who are often accountable for the timeliness and financing of department information technology projects.

Project Management for Inter-Departmental Projects

Project management can be particularly difficult for projects that impact multiple City departments. These projects require communication, compromise and business process adjustments both within and between different departments, and agreement across departments can be difficult to reach. Further, different departments contribute different levels of funding, depending on the department's role in the project and the funding source, which is not always proportional to department needs. For example, the Permit Tracking System is funded largely by Department of Building Inspection revenues although both the Planning Department and the Fire Department have significant system needs.

It is important to have both (a) a single person within each department who is responsible for that department's interest in the project, and (b) a separate, single project manager who oversees the full project and the interest of all departments involved. For example, as discussed in Section 3 of this report, the lack of a designated project manager has contributed to significant delays and inefficiencies in implementing the JUSTIS project.

During the planning and business analysis phases of a project, all departments need to resolve which changes each will make, determine how much they will budget for the project and what the potential security challenges may be, and identify user needs specific to each department. Having a neutral project manager, who is not employed directly by either department and who can provide strategic direction to a specific project's steering committee, can help keep a project moving through difficult decisions.

Project Management within Departments

With the lack of central leadership on information technology and project management, departments have proceeded with designing and implementing their own projects according to different methodologies. Larger departments tend to employ more formal project management policies, while smaller departments tend to employ less formal policies. Both departments with and without policies report successfully completing some projects, while experiencing time delays, resource shortfalls and unsuccessful deployment on other projects.

Five of the fourteen agencies interviewed have provided written project management guidelines that they use to guide project management and implementation. These guidelines range in sophistication from a descriptive overview (Elections) to documented best practices from previous department projects that now serve as templates and models (Human Services) to department-specific methodologies that outline the decision-making process for projects and steps for all levels of project management (Airport, Public Health and Municipal Transportation).

Nine departments failed to produce formally documented project management methodologies. In describing their processes, several of these departments seem to employ methods of project management that are similar to standards established by other departments and project management literature. The remaining departments seem to lack a clear understanding of effective project management practices.

Departments with established systems for both prioritizing information technology projects and managing the work associated with them were able to describe successful and unsuccessful aspects of efforts to deploy information technology projects. While some departments without written procedures reported successfully completed projects, these practices were difficult to evaluate, mainly because they lacked documentation of project planning and work steps. In some departments, projects were not properly documented until large issues emerged, halting implementation, and because project timelines, budgets, and decision-making channels were not clearly developed at the projects' implementation, these projects experienced significant delays, sometimes at a cost to the City. Proper and timely documentation can help build consensus for moving forward with projects and ensure that City resources are spent effectively.

Staff Built vs. Purchased Applications

Several departments have been involved in projects that entail bringing formerly-outsourced systems into the daily operations of information technology staff. As information technology staff grows, particularly in data management skill sets, bringing some of these systems in-house makes financial sense. Other departments have built their own applications because they lack the financial resources to purchase off-the-shelf systems. The costs and benefits of each type of system need to be more thoroughly assessed, rather than decisions being made on an ad hoc basis. This more thorough assessment is crucial to ensuring that departments are making the appropriate considerations in determining whether to implement projects in-house versus off-the-shelf.

Improving Project Management Throughout the Process

Project Management Criteria

Because City departments lack consistent information technology project management resources and procedures, the Committee on Information Technology needs to develop criteria for effective project management, including defining (a) project leadership roles, (b) business objectives, and (c) project budgets and cost components.

Define Project Leadership Roles

Projects are managed either by internal department staff (including information technology staff and other managers), outside consultants or vendors, or Department of Telecommunications and Information Services project managers. Departments engage different sources of project managers depending on the particular needs and costs of a project. Most departments use internal staff to manage projects, even though vendors, consultants, and Department of Telecommunications and Information Services staff may be involved. Vendors tend to lead projects that are fully-contracted software development projects. Department of Telecommunications and Information Services staff members are typically engaged to lead inter-departmental projects.

Most projects involve meetings and coordination between management and information technology staff. Some departments name an executive sponsor, who is responsible for the departments' information technology projects. In order to ensure project success citywide, any City project management guidelines and processes should specify that an internal executive sponsor within each department will be accountable for the overall progress of each project. City guidelines should also articulate processes through which conflicts and problems will be resolved as they arise.

Define Business Objectives for Each Project

Most, but not all, departments maintain documents stating business purposes of each project they undertake. The City should be able to track how every information technology project meets some set of specified goals for the department, or departments, undertaking a given information technology project. At the outset, each project should include a statement of purpose that links the project to the business of the department and articulates the project's potential for improving services, reducing risks, streamlining processes or other ways in which the project meets City or department goals. Departments, and the City, need to have a clear understanding of the changes that any proposed new information technology systems will have on their day-to-day functions and staffing needs.

Define Budgets that Capture Costs

Projects are not currently sorted into separate budget items for agencies and can appear in professional services, equipment, personnel, and other budget line-items.

Project budgets need to include planning time, equipment and software purchases, and staff time in order for the city to fully understand expenditures specific to each information technology project.

Forum to Share Project Information and Technology

The Committee on Information Technology Information should develop a forum for departments to share technology and information, assisting with the development of guidelines and standards as well as prevent departments from making similar project management mistakes. Advice about vendors and products purchased by one department should be easily accessible to other departments considering similar systems. At the same time, specific project management information can help departments think through new ways of improving their own processes and systems. For example, the Department of Public Health has developed an online contract management system, and is working to help other departments use this system. However, at some point, this information sharing effort is outside the scope of Public Health's general work and mission and should be facilitated by the Committee on Information Technology.

Sharing of information across departments can help departments improve their project management practices. The Airport, Public Health and Human Services all have specific methodologies for project management that clearly outline processes for prioritizing project tasks within the department, forming project teams, and working through the chain of project management tasks. These and other department guidelines should be made available to all City departments to serve as examples of project management guidelines.

The Department of Telecommunications and Information Services publishes internal project management guidelines and templates that could be simplified and made available to department information technology directors as well. More than half of the departments interviewed for this report stated that the Telecommunications and Information Services project management guidelines would be useful to them if made available.

Developing Flexible Project Management Guidelines

Since projects involve working within departments' cultures, standards and guidelines need to be flexible and adapt to agency structures. Different systems may work better for different departments, and one set of standards is unlikely to work for all city agencies.

For example, the Municipal Transportation Agency uses detailed federally-mandated project management systems for transportation projects. The Department of Public Health implements a Steering Committee system that prioritizes projects across its functional areas and maintains ongoing lists of project ideas. Each of these processes might be too demanding for full deployment in smaller departments, and might not adequately capture practices for departments that share systems and information with other departments.

The goal of establishing project management standards is to help departments that most need process clarifications, and to ensure citywide standards and accountability. At a minimum, these project management standards should outline the process for initiating a project within a department, explain how project sponsors and teams will be selected, set requirements for written documentation of budgets, timelines and expected outcomes, and articulate how issues that arise will be resolved. Most critical to project success is the designation of a senior-level executive sponsor within the department who is accountable for the success of the project.

Conclusions

The City lacks a strategic process to plan for the City's information technology needs. The Committee on Information Technology, which is the City's primary entity for coordinating information technology processes citywide, has not developed an effective system to plan for and implement information technology projects. This has resulted in uneven and inefficient implementation of information technology projects among City departments. Generally, City departments implement projects based on available funding rather than criteria that defines needs and establishes priorities.

Because City departments are decentralized, City departments do not coordinate resources or effectively share information and technology. Consequently, although some City departments have effective methods of managing information technology projects, project management information is not available to other departments. The Department of Telecommunications and Information Services publishes internal project management guidelines and templates that could be simplified and made available to department information technology directors as well.

Recommendations

The Chair of the Committee on Information Technology should:

2.1 Establish criteria for information technology project management, including definitions of (a) project leadership, (b) business objectives, (c) budgets.

2.2 Establish project management guidelines for inter-departmental projects based on the information and technological needs of each of the participating departments.

2.3 Establish simple, flexible, citywide project management tools and guidelines for City department information technology.

2.4 Assist City departments in reviewing the key service delivery functions within each department to identify relationships and inter-dependencies between core information technology systems.

2.5 Establish information sharing channels for information technology and other department staff so that project ideas, success stories, and challenges are shared within and across departments.

2.6 Improve access to project management training for information technology and administrative staff.

2.7 Work with City departments to develop accounting and budgeting systems that track information technology project costs, including staff time and overhead.

Costs and Benefits

Implementation of these recommendations is intended to improve the cost-effectiveness of information technology projects.