ODNR IT Balanced Scorecard Analysis
ODNR IT Balanced Scorecard Analysis
Learning Module 2
MISST Project 6
Sarah Stottsberry
ODNR Mission and Goals
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources is a collection of 15 divisions that together share four fundamental missions as shown in Table 1. Among these divisions is the Division of Information Technology that provides IT services to the entire ODNR. These services include providing an IT infrastructure, overall IT support, and application development. Through these services, the Division of Information Technology has specific overall objectives, as shown in Table 2, that ultimately support each of ODNR missions.
Table 1: Four Fundamental Mission ComponentsGoal 1: To manage Ohio’s natural resources by sustaining the productivity of Ohio's renewable resources such as water, soils, timber, and wildlife, promoting the wise use of Ohio's non-renewable resources such as oil, gas, coal, and industrial minerals, protecting Ohio's threatened and endangered natural resources such as rare plants and animals, and educating Ohio citizens in wise use and protection of the state’s natural resources.
Goal 2: To promote and sustain leisure services and recreational opportunities and activities such as hiking, biking, camping, boating, hunting, or fishing, to improve the quality of life for all Ohioans.
Goal 3: To promote and sustain Ohio’s future and present economic development by creating, expanding, and retaining jobs, stimulating local economies and industrial development, developing natural resource industries such as oil, gas, coal and industrial minerals, and promoting tourism.
Goal 4: To protect and promote the health and safety of Ohio’s citizens through regulatory responsibilities associated with dam safety, waterway safety, mine safety and floodplain administration, and as they participate in outdoor recreational activities and visit various department facilities.
Table 2: Information Technology Objectives
- Administer an integrated information system that supports department desktop computing and facilitates the sharing of IT resources.
- Develop mechanisms that promote and encourage customer communications.
- Implement security measures that maintain the integrity and controls access to the DNR information network.
- Manage and enhance the department’s Internet and Intranet systems.
- Provide an efficient and reliable network infrastructure for voice and digital information transfer in support of the computing and communication needs of the department.
- Provide effective technical and administrative support to the department’s geographic information management system (GIMS) projects.
- Provide high capacity, reliable and efficient computer servers and database systems to meet the data processing and storage requirements of the Department.
IT Challenges
There are many challenges faced by the Division of Information Technology. It is a strategic service used by all other divisions in the quest to efficiently and effectively meet the overall missions of the ODNR. Since overall ODNR revenues are expected to remain flat across all divisions, budgetary allocations to the divisions are likely to remain flat. It is already estimated that the IT budget will remain relatively flat moving into 2009, with only a 2% increase.
While budgetary constraints are challenging, the Division of Information Technology is also challenged with the number of applications that it supports over the entire organization. Among the 131 applications that are used by the ODNR, many of them are specific to a particular division, use disparate technologies, and some have become antiquated and are in need of replacement.
Given the challenges at hand, it is imperative that the Division of Information Technology ensure that it supports the other divisions, but at the same time, it needs to ensure its services are in line with the overall missions of the ODNR.
IT Balanced Scorecard Analysis
An IT Balanced Scorecard analysis is a way for an organization to ensure that its IT strategy is in line with the overall business strategy. For the purposes of this assignment, I used a first generation balanced scorecard analysis, as depicted in Figure 1, which ensures that IT performance is measured from four different perspectives including User Orientation, Business Contribution, Operational Excellence, and Future Orientation. My first step in this analysis was to determine specific objectives that could be classified under each of the perspectives. In order to determine valid objectives, I spent time reviewing the 2008-2009 Information Technology Plan.
User Orientation (Customer Interaction)
The Division of Information Technology’s customers are ODNR employees and business leaders that reside in all of the other 16 divisions. The technology plan shows that many divisions have specific overall objectives that are directly and indirectly dependent on IT services. In order to focus my attention on IT objectives that would provide the most benefit to all, I reviewed all these objectives to pinpoint common themes among the divisions. During this process, I identified two main objectives in this area.
- Provide Effective Technical and Administrative Support to ODNR
- Increase Effective Intranet Use
Business Contribution (Financial Perspective)
This perspective focuses on how management views the Division of Information Technology at ODNR. In order to determine relevant objectives, my main focus was on the overall financial situation at ODNR. Given that all the divisions revenues are predicted to remain flat, and the wealth of applications that are used at the ODNR, it is imperative that wise decisions be made with respect to the time and resources allotted to a selected projects. The technology plan emphasizes several projects that appear to be ones that will provide effective business value. However, as the year unfolds, the Division of Information Technology should have performance measures that ensure that business value is actually served. Therefore, I have focused on two main objectives in this area.
- Increase business value of overall IT projects
- Use existing IT resources to provide more business value
Operational Excellence (Internal Business Processes)
This perspective focuses on objectives that ensure effective and efficient use of IT resources. My analysis in this area focused not only on cross division objectives that pertain directly to the access and use of IT services, but also focused on the overall financial situation of the ODNR. The technology plan identified varying objectives from all divisions and most of them rely directly on specific applications or databases. Given this knowledge, providing a secure, efficient, and reliable network is very important to ODNR. With respect to the financial challenges of the ODNRin facing flat revenues in the years to come, finding more efficient IT processes allowing the division to provide more and enhanced services with the same IT resources is also important. Given this realization, I pinpointed the following main objectives for this area.
- Maintain a secure Network
- Maintain an efficient and reliable network
- Increase the efficiency of IT Staff
Future Orientation (Innovation Future)
This perspective focuses on the ability of the Division of Information Technology to meet future needs of the ODNR. Through my evaluation of the technical plan, I realized the magnitude of the responsibility of the division. It is faced with a mass of potential IT projects, and there are silos of information and technologies that are already in use. As shown in appendix A, there are over 130 applications that use various technologies including Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL, Quicken Database, various web technologies, GIS technologies, and even simple applications like Microsoft Excel. Furthermore, in reviewing the proposals of the selected projects, it is clear that some of the applications are outdated and are in need of renovation. As the ODNR looks toward the future, it will be crucial to standardize and consolidate applications. Additionally, outdated applications should be purged and/or revamped in order to justify the time spent supporting these applications. Furthermore, in order to be well positioned to handle future IT challenges that the other divisions present, it is crucial to have well trained IT staff that understand innovative technologies that could be used to enhance existing applications, as well as provide new capabilities. I have chosen the following objectives that could be used to support the ODNR into the futures.
- Update or eliminate antiquated applications
- Enhance the expertise of IT Staff in the use of Innovative Technologies
- Use innovative techniques to provide newer capabilities that were previously not possible
Measuring the Objectives
In balanced scorecard analysis, once the main objectives have been identified, it is necessary to determine key metrics that can be used to evaluate the outcome of the objectives. In order to determine some viable metrics, one resource I found was the book “The Executive’s Guide to Information Technology, Second Edition”. It acknowledged that viable metrics would vary depending on the size of the IT group, organizational structure of the company, and the type of industry. It did, however, point out that there are some measures that work equally well regardless of the circumstances. Metrics such as Network Availability and Network security are examples. Other objectives are more closely tied to ODNR and its overall goals. The following table summarizes these “minor objectives” that can be tied back to one or more of the overall IT Objectives listed at the beginning. I have included a field that attempts to cross reference the minor objective to the main overall objective(s).
Perspective / Minor Objective / Overall IT ObjectiveFrom Table 2 / Metric
User Orientation
(Customer Interaction) /
- Provide Effective Technical and Administrative Support to ODNR
- Increase Effective Intranet/ Internet Use
Average survey response as to benefit of all intranet applications administered to all ODNR divisions > X
Business Contribution
(Financial Perspective) /
- Increase business value of overall IT projects
- Use existing IT resources to provide more business value
Operational Excellence
(Internal Business Processes) /
- Maintain a secure Network
- Maintain an efficient and reliable network
(Total Hours Network Available/Total available Hours) > X%
- Increase the efficiency of IT Staff
Future Orientation
(Innovation Future) /
- Update or eliminate antiquated applications
- Enhance the expertise of IT Staff in the use of Innovative Technologies
- Use innovative techniques to provide newer capabilities that were previously not possible
References
The Balanced Scorecard and IT Governance
The Executive’s Guide to Information Technology, Second EditionEx
ODNR Division of Information Technology Information Technology Plan