CTO Download: Improving the Speed of Government Services
CTO Download: Improving the Speed of Government Services https://csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/cto-download-improving-the-speed-of-government-services-1.jpg 800 596 C-Suite Network https://csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/cto-download-improving-the-speed-of-government-services-1.jpg
With the city’s trove of data, Lakeland, Fla., CIO Terry Brigman leads a team finding smart solutions that increase the speed of government services.
Lakeland, Fla., is the largest city between Tampa and Orlando, with a population of more than 106,000 and 38 named lakes. As Lakeland’s Chief Information Officer and Director of IT, Terry Brigman’s primary mission is to use data to find government process inefficiencies, rapidly eliminate them and replace them with smart operations that improve the speed of government services.
In your opinion, how has IT in government evolved over the last decade?
Brigman: As in other businesses, IT is a component of almost every government business process. If we hope to run government efficiently we must take full advantage of all available technology relative to the business functions we provide to our citizens. The rapid digitization of all business processes will require government to adopt a new pace of technical innovation to keep up with employee and citizen needs. We must focus on citizen-centric mobile and cloud technologies and be prepared to exploit these technologies for the benefit of the city. The future of government is on-line, self-service, real-time, all-the-time (e-government).
For IT organizations to meet the needs of citizens and the business departments we serve then we must implement a high performing, reliable, flexible and cost-effective IT infrastructure and applications which use both internal, on-premise, resources as well as cloud offerings from qualified service providers. We must have highly qualified and skilled staff to manage this environment. We should follow PMI project management standards, ITIL change management standards, Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and ITIL IT support best practices.
How does your IT department engage and collaborate with other agencies throughout Lakeland’s government?
Brigman: We have several leadership organizations in our county and our 17 municipalities that help connect the IT departments. There are also several planning organizations that work for the benefit of the entire county [such as The Florida Local Government Information Systems Association].
IT is 21st century infrastructure that is just as important as roads, electricity and water and we must treat it that way from a planning perspective. Within our city the IT Department has assigned customer advocates to all our supported business departments. We provide I/T development and support for all city business functions including the electric and water utilities, police, fire, public works, finance, human resources, community development, parks and recreation, internal audit, risk management, purchasing, communications, The Lakeland Linder Regional Airport and The RP Funding Center.
It is our desire to be the primary trusted partner for every city department to meet their information technology needs. It is also our desire that city management will view the IT management staff and the department as key enablers for business process change that will benefit our citizens.
As a technology leader working within the public sector what specific technologies interest you?
Brigman: I believe big data and data analytics will be a key technology for our city for the next several years. We have a tremendous amount of data that we can capitalize on by implementing a city-wide analytics and reporting platform….
