Strategic IT Planning for Public Organizations: A Toolkit - UNU-IIST ...

Strategic IT Planning Toolkit – Section 2: Strategic IT Planning Process
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A1. Planning the process
The activity is aimed at obtaining the required commitment from establishing a business case for the
planning project (if it is not already institutionalized), obtaining the necessary commitment from
management and stakeholder, putting together the IT Strategy Team, mobilizing the necessary
resources, and providing a schedule for the whole exercise.
T1.1. Obtaining Commitment and Approval – The first step of the overall planning process is for the
IT organization to establish a sound business case for strategic IT planning to the management of the
agency. This is particularly important in public organizations in which the practice of strategic
planning in general is seldom carried out. A successful completion of this task entails obtaining
management approval and commitment to providing the necessary support to the IT organization; in
particular championing the exercise and seen as the owner and sponsor of the project.
T1.2. Stakeholder’s Analysis – Once the approval and commitment is obtained, the IT organization
needs to determine the important stakeholders and their roles in the overall process. Stakeholders are
generally required to participate in some of the planning tasks or supply critical information as input
for these tasks. Required information includes organizational strategy, specific business requirements
and drivers for IT in the agency and expectations regarding IT services. The output of this task is the
identification of the major stakeholders, their specific roles, communication plans for each
stakeholder category and notification to these stakeholders explaining the purpose of the exercise and
their sought contributions.
T1.3. Strategy Team Formation – The strategy team consists of IT organization head, a senior
management officer (preferably the deputy head of the agency), and other persons representing
different stakeholders categories such as employees, heads of core business units, representatives of
different customer categories (e.g. citizens and businesses). The stakeholder’s analysis in Task T1.2
provides a valuable input into the team formation task. Once the composition of the team is
determined and team members agree to their participation, the terms of reference (TOR) for the team
is established in their inaugural meeting. The output from this task is a team list and the TOR for the
strategy team.
T1.4. Scheduling and Resource Mobilization – After team composition with clear TOR, the team
needs to draw the schedule for the planning exercise and secure the necessary resources (materials,
human and financial) for completing the exercise. This task ends with a clear schedule, specification
of the resource requirement and approval by management on providing the resources.
Report No. 417, May 2009
UNU-IIST, P. O. Box 3058, Macao