Ass.1 in MIS2

Think about yourself worthy to be called as IT professional, how do you see yourself 10 years from now, what are your strategies to get there? (at least 3000 words)


When I was in high school, I already thought of what I want to be in the future. What kind of job I have if I finish my studies in college. 10 years from now I’m an IT Professional and probably work as an IT Consultant or an IT Manager in a big or small corporation. It is one of the hard jobs of an IT Graduates because it has a big role in the company especially in planning. Being an IT people is hard and enjoy. It is hard because it is more in paper works and making programs. Enjoy because during in hard times you are learning and collecting ideas that educate us.

As a student we have a big role when we talk about information technology because as an IT people our studies have encounter different explorations to gather some information from the different sources in the environment. We communicate to the people surround us. We write journals and read some books, newspapers, etc. and share what we had read to the people. An IT Professional is a person who is responsible for giving or suggesting ideas for the development of the systems and information technology.

Planning is one of the key in passing the challenges of being an IT Professional. To reach our goals in life we need to plan it and have a good result. I know there are challenges I will face in reaching my goals but with some strategies I have I think it is enough to pass those challenges. And I know God will help me with this path I take.


What is IT Professional?

IT Professional is a bimonthly publication of the IEEE Computer Society for the developers and managers of enterprise information systems. Coverage areas include emerging technologies, Web services, Internet security, data management, enterprise architectures and infrastructures, software development, systems integration, and wireless networks.


Strategic Planning in Today's IT Environment

Today's organizations are complex systems in which the interactions among various processes, structures, and functions—sales, finance, products and service developments and distribution, manufacturing, materials, support, and maintenance—must be managed such that the results meet a shared goal of delivering maximum value to customers at an optimum price.

In the current, relatively unstable economy—which is both highly competitive and dynamic—effective management of IT is essential for any firm's success because it improves the firm's strategic value. IT managers, by structuring an improved flow of information, add product value and help their firms respond to client demands more quickly. However, to accomplish these tasks effectively, managers must have complete and up-to-date knowledge of the IT operations within their organizations.
Many leading firms may not fully recognize the importance that IT has in keeping them moving forward, and issues remain about the extent to which management must change to accommodate variations in the economy. How can they be assured that their management decisions are optimal relative to limiting expense and maximizing profit? Management decisions not only impact product and delivery values, but they also might restrict innovation, limit expansion into new areas, or diminish organizational flexibility or responsiveness to change.
There appears to be a continuing struggle in industry today about how to manage information systems or IT in general, and it has carried on for decades. The bottom line is how to find management styles and approaches that lead an organization to success in its market area.


THE IMPORTANCE OF THE STRATEGIC IT PLAN

This Strategic Information Technology Plan sets the direction for Tarrant County Government, including the activities of the Commissioners Court and the information technology efforts of all departments and offices that make up the Tarrant County Government. The plan communicates Tarrant County Government's strategic direction to the Commissioners Court as it makes decisions related to information technology.
This 5-year Strategic Information Technology Plan is a living document. Through continuous input from departments and ongoing data collection, the Strategic Information Technology Plan will remain a valuable document. The plan provides guiding principles and broad goals outlining the basic roadmap for information technology into the 21st century. The Strategic Information Technology Plan will be updated by the Steering Committee’s direction each year where it will be modified to adjust to inevitable changes in Tarrant County's environment. During the summer of 2003, the Strategic Information Technology Plan should be completely reassessed. This process will insure that the plan remains a strategic document and a roadmap for the effective use of information technology in the future. The Strategic Information TechnTechnology Plan supports governmental functions and will be coordinated with other strategic plans including the Tarrant County Strategic Plan.

The scope of the plan includes computer, telephone, radio, and video systems, applications and infrastructure. Through successful implementation of this plan, Tarrant
County Government will make the best use of information technology to meet the business requirements and to raise County services to an unprecedented level of quality at the lowest possible cost. The County Executives established a vision for Tarrant County in April of 2000. That vision is strategically supported by the use of information technology as described in this plan.

STRATEGIC GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Citizens are demanding seamless, integrated services that can be accessed without knowing how government is organized. Corporations are demanding streamlined government processes, less bureaucracy, and less cumbersome regulations. The private sector is putting pressure on State and local government to provide education services to meet the demand for a well-educated, technology-literate work force with up-to-date skills. Everyone wants government to cost less, yet be more accountable for the management of our tax dollars and for the delivery of quality services that have measurable value. The County has responded to these challenges with a directive to develop this Strategic Information Technology Plan. This has led to a fundamental rethinking of the County’s role in service delivery, the types of services it offers, and how these services are provided. The new model for government will be based on multi-organization cooperation to deliver a coordinated set of technology-enabled services that are designed from the citizen’s point of view. This is a complex model that cannot be implemented without the use of advanced information technologies.

STRATEGIES:

STRATEGY 1

Maintaining vision for citizen-centric services, and beyond
In the next few years, citizens of Tarrant County will demand services without regard for where the base service is located. They will be looking departmental transparency and will expect services to cut across organizational boundaries, thus making it unnecessary to know the structure of County government or its department’s procedures, but still get to the desired function and service. For example, it will be possible to obtain a license from the County with a single transaction from any networked personal computer, or with a single phone call to a Call Center, without regard to which department is responsible for completing the transaction. Citizens and corporations will increasingly be able to transact business with the County from any locally available facility, at any hour, from home, office, school, library, or commercial site. While direct human interaction will always be available, people will be able to complete much of their business quickly from the networked computer of their choice. When a social worker is needed by a family, when a nurse is needed in a medical crisis, or when police are needed to protect against threats to people or property, new IT tools will support them and other members of the County’s work force as they deliver those services in the field—in real time, in real life.
The personal computer of the near future will be location-independent (mobile and Internet accessible) and whenever useful, keyboard-independent (voice or touch-screen activated). Information technology will continue to change not only how government delivers services to its citizens, but how citizens work, learn, commute, conduct business transactions, and play. The economic engines that drive the County’s market for skilled jobs—that result in prosperity for Tarrant County—are also being changed by information technology. As the industrial age becomes the digital age, information technology skills are required for our labor force to remain marketable in this changing economy.

STRATEGY 2

Creating an IT environment for the 21st century
The effort to create a government that is simpler and more effective for citizens and corporations has created a need for multi-organizational collaboration and more sharing of tasks, financing and responsibility. The partnerships required to provide consolidated service delivery across agencies, coordinated service delivery among levels of government and increased interaction with the private sector present a number of challenges. Those challenges include:

Changing the way we plan for, fund, and manage information technology, to reflect a countywide perspective.

The increasing need to manage information and services across departments requires new ways to plan, budget, and implement IT on a countywide basis. We are changing the way we do Countywide and departmental IT planning to an integrated process that identifies common business needs and funding issues across all departments. This will enhance the preparation of the Countywide IT budget that supports multi-department projects, Countywide and departmental IT services, and core business systems. The Countywide
IT budget and its companion IT plan will establish the dependencies between
Countywide and departmental IT services, multi-department projects and individual department programs, projects, and budgets.

Changing the information technology infrastructure so that it can support new services and service delivery methods.

It is impractical and costly to reorganize departments each time a service or government function is changed. An information technology environment that transcends current departmental organizational boundaries can enable streamlined business processes, and reengineered government services. To truly enable improvements in government services, the infrastructure that connects County employees to each other must also connect them to the external government organizations and providers that are an integral part of the County’s business.

Changing information management practices to support the complexity of multiorganizational cooperative services.

Multi-organizational service delivery and management require close cooperation and direct information sharing. The practices necessary for multi-organizational information management will assure:

• Appropriate accessibility
• Protection of personal and sensitive information
• Stewardship to ensure currency and authenticity of shared information

The complexity of multi-organizational information management requires collaboration on a number of information sharing issues. Key issues include the following:

• Common data definitions
• Common storage formats or data transformation rules
• Cross-system countywide security model
• Access rights and rules of usage
• Data aging and re-authentication schedules
• Common information repository design and management
• Document exchange and management
• Multi-media archives
• Electronic records retention

Information management issues must be identified, analyzed and resolved across the entire spectrum of electronic media and technologies that will be used to accomplish cooperative service delivery.

STRATEGY 3

Realigning IT department resources to maximize their impact on the delivery of technology-enabled services.

The county must realign its IT department resources to support the Countywide IT environment we have defined for the 21st century. This is necessary to provide for multi-departmental needs and to support individual departmental initiatives that are critical to the County. The realignment of IT department resources will entail:

• Upgrading and updating IT skills so that the County can use new technologies more effectively.
• Integrating enterprise technology platforms and products to promote cost efficiencies.
• Selective sourcing of IT services to outside providers whenever this is more effective than maintaining them in-house.
• Emphasizing business-oriented technology so that the value of IT as an enabler to the county is better understood.
• Making specialized IT expertise available to all departments, regardless of the department in which it is found, through project management and coaching principles.
• The realignment of IT resources is critical to creating the 21st century IT environment. The following chapters define the specific goals and objectives that must be achieved in order to realize the County’s vision.

GOALS
• To guide Tarrant County in developing an information systems infrastructure that is effective, reliable, efficient, and flexible and secure for county departments and citizens.
• To provide an IT service delivery framework that encourages collaboration and supports team-building and will allow utilization of enterprise solutions to meet common needs.

Reference:

http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/abs/html/mags/it/2009/06/mit2009060006.htm
http://www.computer.org/portal/web/itpro/about
http://www.tarrantcounty.com/etechnology/lib/etechnology/Strategic_IT_Plan.pdf


my blog: www.minenor.blogspot.com