Strategic Information Technology (IT) Planning is essential for government institutions to effectively support their socio-economic and political objectives with Information Technology. The alignment of IT strategies with public sector reform programs is also required to transform and improve the internal workings of government and how it delivers public services and responds to the needs of its various stakeholders. Developing and aligning IT strategies at various levels of government (central, state, provincial and local) as well as across ministries, departments and agencies, is imperative for coherence of purpose and optimal use of resources by government. However, the requisite capabilities for developing IT strategies to concretely support e-government and other IT-related programs are not readily available within governments in general.

This project aims to develop a Strategic IT Planning Framework consisting:

1. A process specifying the IT strategy development process
2. A toolkit which explains how this process can be customized by different public organizations and implemented
3. A set of template to support the execution of major steps of the process such as: stakeholders analysis, IT capability assessment, IT visioning and goal setting, IT strategy development, IT objectives development, strategic mapping of IT objectives, development of IT initiatives and projects and IT strategy evaluation.
4. An IT Strategy Management and Alignment System (IT Strategy Database) which provides government-wide management, analysis and reporting capability for IT strategies and initiatives contributed by different government agencies to support their respective missions and strategic goals and also towards the support for government-wide programs such as e-government and public reform programs.

Using the developed IT strategy process and toolkit, the project will also assist a number of pilot agencies in developing their IT strategies. It will also assist the IT coordination office in setting up the IT Strategy Database to manage and align IT strategies with priority government programs.

The project will in partnership with the Macao SAR Government (MSARG) through its Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau (SAFP), the project will:

• assist two other government agencies in developing their IT strategies
• provide training to selected officers from different government agencies including the two pilot agencies on how to use the developed IT strategy process
• provide training to SAFP on how to use the Central IT Strategy and Alignment System

The solution provides the requisite knowledge for developing strategic IT plans in the form of a toolkit to be freely and openly distributed to government agencies. It develops IT strategy from organizational strategies and goals - guaranteeing alignment by design. A government-wide adoption of the framework with its supporting IT strategy database allows IT coordination office to align IT initiatives across agencies (horizontal alignment) and at the same time ensure that IT initiatives from agencies support strategic IT initiatives of government particularly related to e-governance development and public administration reform.

A study of literature on strategic IT planning methodologies, techniques and good practice frameworks is carried out to guide the prescription and design of a suitable IT strategy process for public organizations. Concrete IT planning practices in Macao government agencies are also studied to determine baseline capability maturity for Strategic IT Planning the agencies. Identification of partner agencies for the implementation of the IT strategy process in Macao is another major outcome from this activity.

Guided by the outcome of the Survey and Research activity (A1) and core functions and responsibilities of public agencies, this activity develops a process to guide public agencies in producing a balanced, aligned and shared IT Strategy. The prescribed process enables the development of manageable IT strategy maps and scorecards for the user agencies. The major outcome from this activity is a rigorous specification of the IT strategy process.

To support the use of the process developed in Process Activity (A3), this activity develops a toolkit to explain the details of the process, how to customise it for specific a agency and how the different steps of the process can be effectively implemented. This activity also produces a set of templates to assist the IT strategy team to carry out: stakeholders' analysis, IT capability assessment, IT visioning and goal setting, IT strategy development, IT strategy mapping, IT initiatives and projects elicitation, IT strategy implementation and evaluation.

This activity develops the IT Strategy Management and Alignment System (IT Strategy Database) primarily to manage the IT strategies developed by agencies. The system which is to be administered by a Central IT Coordination Office, will also provide information on the alignment of IT initiatives and projects from agencies with government-wide programs, particularly those related to the development of Electronic Government and public sector modernization and reform. Various analytical reports based individual and consolidated IT strategies will be provided by the IT Strategy Database.

A series of IT Visioning, goal setting, and strategy development sessions will be conducted in selected partner (or pilot) agencies, involving the participation of agency heads, IT head, head of core business and support units, IT service customer representatives.

The major deliverables of the project are:

D1) Strategic IT Planning Process - a specification of the process (expressed using semi-formal notations) for carrying out strategic IT planning in a public organization

D2) Strategic IT Planning Toolkit - a document explaining in details: the steps of the prescribed process, how to customize the process and how it can be implemented

D3) Templates for Strategic IT Planning - a set of forms to guide strategy team in implementing the steps of the process.

D4) IT Strategies for Agencies in Macao - IT strategy documents for each partner agency in Macao as the outcome of their IT strategy projects

D5) Government IT Strategy and Alignment System - a web application deployed at the Central IT Coordination office to manage IT strategies developed by agencies.

D6) Trained Personnel from selected agencies - a pool of trained officers with knowledge on how to develop and manage IT strategies

D7) Strategic IT Planning Project Portal - a portal providing information the project with related resources

In addition, the following categories of events will be organized as part of the project:

E1) Visioning workshop at pilot agencies - attended by agency stakeholders to determine the IT vision and goals based organizational goals

E2) Strategy sessions at pilot agencies - involving IT Head and Heads of core business and support units (and their staff) to develop IT strategies and concrete objectives based on the IT vision developed at the IT Visioning Workshop. Strategy sessions will be conducted for each unit of the pilot agency.

E3) Strategy presentation at pilot agencies - the Head of IT with the support of the project team makes a presentation of the developed IT strategies to all stakeholders (head of the agency, heads of units, representatives of employees, customers etc. ) for comments and feedback.

E4) Training Program - involves the training of government IT staff and other categories of employees involved in IT planning on how to carryout strategic IT planning. This program also includes the training of representatives of the IT coordination office.

The developed toolkit will be packaged as an Open Courseware for Strategic IT Planning for direct use by individual government agencies. The Government-wide IT strategy database will be made available as an open source software to interested parties. The Toolkit and templates will be disseminated through the workshops, school and courses organized by the Community of Practice for Electronic Governance - UNeGov.net.

Planned exploitation of the project results and deliverables by relevant government organizations is expected to yield the following outcomes:

1) Government agencies involved in pilot program and the IT Coordination office possess “COBIT Level 3 – Defined” capability in Strategic IT Planning Process

2) (Levels: Non-existent, Ad-hoc, Repeatable, Defined, Managed and Measurable, Optimized)

3) Well documented and consolidated IT strategies and projects agencies across the whole of government

4) Improved agency-level support for government-wide programs (such as the e-government and public service reform)

5) Better understanding of conflicts between agency level IT needs and Government IT coordination goals

6) Enhanced capability for the IT coordination office to better management and align IT strategies and initiatives across government

The total duration for the project is 24 months. The project officially commenced on January 1, 2007 and will end by December 31, 2008.

Project schedule - to be written.

Project partners:

1) Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau, Macao SAR Government (as IT Coordination Office)

2) Financial Services Bureau, Macao SAR Government (as Pilot Agency)

3) Bureau for Telecommunication Regulations , Macao SAR Government (as Pilot Agency)

Project team:

1) Adegboyega Ojo - Lead

2) Bimal Pratap Shah - Strategy

3) Khoi Nguyen – Technical

4) Tomasz Janowski – Advisor

Project risks - to be written.

Conclusions and lessons learnt – to be written.