Improving Information Systems
Posted 8-19-1999
You may have read recently in the daily papers that the county reorganized its
Information Systems Department by merging the County Information Systems and the Judicial
Information Systems departments into one department. We also increased the compensation of
the management employees and will address the union employees when we arrange an agreement
with the union.
The merger was done to improve the
efficiency of this very important support group and the raises were awarded to make
information systems salaries more competitive with the private sector. In this
month’s article, I would like to share with you the logic behind our actions.
In recent audits by Peat Marwick, the
county’s auditing firm, one of the recommendations was to consolidate these two
parallel groups.
Each of the old departments was providing
the same range of support from hardware set up, to technical support, to application
development. However, there was no real cross support and as we lost personnel each
department struggled to provide adequate assistance to county computer users. The merged
department eliminated one upper level management position but now has one group supporting
application development for all county departments. Employees in that group will be
cross-trained so that they can support the courts and county government.
The other group will be cross-trained to
provide technical expertise so that more thorough support can be offered to all users.
We had to assure the president judge that
the courts would not suffer from this merger. I’m confident the opposite will happen
and they will receive better support. Due to people moving to the private sector, Judicial
Information Systems had lost folks and were understaffed. By having more folks
cross-trained to help, they should be better off.
A by-product of the merger will be the
formation of a policy committee. From my perspective, the goal of the policy committee
should be to develop a long range plan with one overriding objective, to increase
efficiency and productivity through a more effective use of technology.
If we can do that, then we’ll have
successfully used the public dollars we invest in technology.
There is a model in county government for
being more productive with fewer people by using technology. That is Controller Jeff
Pavetti’s office. Over time they have assumed a greater workload with less people. We
need to tap Jeff’s expertise and hopefully apply the strategy of the
controller’s department to other county offices.
I’m sure the raises awarded to
management personnel received more attention than the merger. I have consistently been
very conservative about spending public dollars, but there are times when we must bite the
bullet and spend money.
Frankly for the employees with the most
marketable skills, we still lag behind the private sector. If we didn’t minimize the
drain of personnel, we faced the problem of having few information systems employees left
that would be familiar with our operation. Today, like much of the world, we are dependent
on technology in virtually every aspect of county government and could not afford to have
work grind to a halt. We are also developing career paths and will raise entry-level
salaries because recruitment and retention has become difficult at our old wage scale.
The commissioners will face many difficult
decisions about our budget over the next few years. Rather than shrinking the budget,
initially this action will cost us more.
But if we ultimately better utilize our
information systems personnel and technology and improve productivity throughout county
government, in the long run this investment will serve us well. |
