April Minutes

ITAC MEETING MINUTES
For April 19, 2007

Attendees:
Frieda Artis, Reggie Brown, Sondra Chaffee, Niamh Darcy, John Killebrew, Darryl McGraw, Gloria McNeill and Shannon Schelin

Wake County:
Velvadine Wallace and Lib Wanner

The meeting began at 9:06 a.m. Lib Wanner welcomed everyone to the group and briefly discussed the agenda for today’s meeting.

IT Performance Metrics:
Lib Wanner gave an overview of where Wake County stands on Performance Metrics. She went on to list some of the common measures in place such as Security, System availability & performance, Project delivery, Quality, speed, efficiency, and External client measures. Lib then asked the group if they could think of other areas to measure performance for IT services.

Darryl McGraw stated that at Wake Technical College they measure their customer satisfaction levels to determine if the funds invested were worth it to their customers. John Killebrew stated that at MCNC they have a community-value proposition, which spells out the performance benchmarks and tracks visible progress of performance. He stated that this tool provides the ability to post their popularity on website for public use. Lib asked John if the benchmark was listed in the service level agreement. John replied that they aim for 99.9% availability on the benchmark, which would exclude schedule maintenance, but an advisory notice is sent out to the technical staff.

Niamh Darcy stated that Wake County would need to specify the results they wanted to achieve. She stated that Wake County should start at a lower level but overall look at the strategic goal. Lib asked, as an IT organization, would it be beneficial to meet with key customers to determine how they are utilizing the Internet and the effectiveness to be successful? Darryl replied that he would definitely rely on other departments for a big chunk of the budget but would measure the project and provide feedback on the success.

Shannon Schelin asked Lib if Wake County uses cost accounting. Lib replied Wake County relies on ROI (return on investment) for their projects. Shannon stated Wake County could use cost accounting to create bandwidth consumption for their projects and allocate the charges to the various departments based on usage. Shannon then asked Lib how Wake County gets resources when new staff comes aboard. Lib replied that the general understanding is that it costs more for staff when they have various applications that require more horsepower. She stated that she would prefer to stay away from charge backs and just provide the data.

Lib then asked the group for any questions she should address with the customers. Niamh asked if they include spam, because it is a big problem. Lib replied that IS currently has an Intrusion Detection System in place for antivirus, which provides a level of protection.

Lib stated that next fiscal year, she was thinking about adding on-boarding charges for new staff per employee for IT cost, to make it more visible. Lib asked the group if their jobs were doing something similar to this. Darryl and John said no, but they would be interested in any data Lib could provide them. John stated that they use Deltech (cost point package) for their projects, which provides boundary conditions for funding for the project. He stated that the toughest part is catching the labor.

Lib then asked if they measure projects or ongoing support for innovations. Niamh replied that this information is built into their budget for the year. John stated that they forecast in advance for benchmarks and a structure is built for innovations. He stated that they have a tool in place that tracks this information throughout the year. Niamh asked Lib if Wake County has a breakdown by training, or if it is a combination for leaders and employees for tracking. Lib replied ERP is more uniform tracking.

Lib asked the group if they thought it was a good idea to track goals that are not being met. John replied that the call center avoids the opportunity to perform tracking. He stated that they have customer interaction – footprint means of tracking the tickets – which the managers review for trends. John stated that footprint is a tool-like remedy – database tracking. Lib stated that IS uses LANDesk for this capability.

Lib stated that Wake County’s goal is to move from a manual standpoint to automation. Darryl stated that their helpdesk goes to knowledge base for training. Sondra asked Darryl if they noticed a difference in reduction in the call center from self-help. Darryl stated that it was too early to tell because they only implemented it 2 months ago.

Lib then stated that Wake County uses both budget and resource requests for their data. Darryl stated that those are the two things they use as a source as well as for budget. John stated that they post the information for public consumption for their financials on the website to give a better view of the advisory committee – NCREN. He stated that the public and the advisory committee are included in outage, availability by node, and statistics of utilization.

Lib asked the group what other things should be considered in terms of measuring what Information Services is providing. Reggie stated that they could possibly bring in a consultant as a liaison between the units and the end user to make things more efficient.

Lib then stated that, due to other commitments within the group, she would end the meeting early. The meeting adjourned at 9:44 a.m.