IT directors need to gauge whether their department is
viewed as an equal partner or a "necessary evil" to win hearts and
minds in an organisation, according to Malcolm Whitehouse, head of
IT strategy at the Department for Work and Pensions, speaking at
the IT Directors' Forum.
Other steps to secure support include deciding what is important in
feedback from staff and being able to talk in terms that business
leaders can understand.
"Do you know your audience and how people in your business perceive
you?" asked Whitehouse.
The IT department's position within the business can be placed
under different categories, such as a strategic partner, necessary
evil, or a cost overhead, and IT directors need to plan their
strategy to reflect this, he added.
Whitehouse, who was previously responsible for e-business services
at insurance company Royal & Sun Alliance, stressed the
importance of "internal PR" for the IT department and the need to
maintain a consistent message about IT to the business.
Explaining the goals of the IT department to business managers is
often better done face-to-face rather than in a lengthy document
strewn with "techno babble", said Whitehouse.
Another challenge for IT decision-makers is in distinguishing
inevitable grumbles from valid concerns about end-users having to
use, for instance, standard applications.
Malcolm, who joined the DWP about one year ago, is currently
reviewing the DWP's IT strategy. The review comes against a
background of far-reaching change in the civil service. This year's
Budget outlined plans for a 30,000 reduction in the DWP's staff and
chancellor Gordon Brown has said that IT will help with this and
deliver efficiency savings.
Aside from improving the performance of the Child Support Agency's
system, whose main IT supplier is EDS, the DWP has a number of
large IT projects under way.
These include rolling out an IP network over the next three years
to improve internal communication at the DWP and designing a new
layer of software to help the department's staff calculate complex
benefit entitlements.
The IP network, which is thought to be worth more than £200m, is
being installed in partnership with EDS and BT Syntegra. The DWP
and its suppliers are currently installing an "integration
backbone" using IBM's Websphere middleware software, said
Whitehouse.
The project to write business rules into the systems used by
benefit advisers costs about £10m and might use neural network
technology, added Whitehouse.