Previous heading | Top | Next heading

Understanding of ICT strategy

Better Practice results: Senior executives use the entity’s ICT strategy as a factor in developing and assessing projects, which assists in building the entity’s ICT capability.

An entity’s ICT strategic plan will typically:

• assess the current adequacy of ICT to support current and future business needs – in particular the entity’s program delivery strategy;
• identify a required or desired future state of ICT, including the preferred ICT architecture (that is, key processes, data stores, technologies and their relationships); and
• identify how to move from the current to preferred state of ICT capability.

Making progress toward the preferred state of ICT capability is important in helping an entity improve service quality and reliability, manage costs, and increase its ability to respond to future government requirements.

Many aspects of an entity’s ICT strategic plan will have a technical focus and will be used by an entity’s Chief Information Officer to help plan and manage the entity’s ICT infrastructure.

However, having a shared understanding between executives, business sponsors and ICT specialists on key, business-oriented aspects of the entity’s ICT strategy will aid the development of proposals that will contribute to that ICT strategy.

It is better practice for entities to promote a high-level understanding of the entity’s ICT strategy among its senior executives and those developing project proposals that have a significant ICT component.

For example, an important element of an ICT strategy is an entity’s ICT architecture. It is useful for the ICT architecture document to contain a section suited to executives. The diagram on the next page shows a simplified high-level ICT architecture, combining data, business processes and communications.

Other practical steps to develop an informed understanding by entity executives of the ICT strategy include:

• preparing ‘plain-English’ versions of the business perspective on ICT strategies, including case studies and examples of how elements of the ICT strategy contribute to the entity’s business strategies and goals;
• regular briefings on the progress of the ICT strategy and its practical implications to senior executive forums;
• targeted briefings to executives with a common role – such as regional managers, or program delivery managers; and
• site visits to show examples of the entity’s planned future ICT capabilities already in operation elsewhere.

Previous heading | Top | Next heading

Example: Executive view of ICT architecture

It is important for executives involved with developing or approving project proposals that have a significant ICT component to have a high-level understanding of the entity’s ICT strategy, including an executive perspective of the entity’s ICT architecture. This will assist them to make informed judgements on high-level ICT aspects of proposals.

This example of an ICT architecture summary is simplified. For practical use it would be expanded to A4 or A3 size, and show the key agency-specific features of its architecture. For example, there would likely be more detail on key business processes, and an indication of application systems. The specific detail would depend on the agency’s circumstances and which architectural issues were important to executive consideration.

---

Previous: Alignment with corporate goals

Next: Alignment with government-wide policies