Preface

Stanislaus County employs a model for information technology governance that could best be described as federalist. There is a central information technology (“IT”) department, Information Technology Central which manages certain enterprise systems and practice. Simultaneously there are IT functions in many County departments responsible for some gradient of departmental technology needs. While there have been groups formed at times over the years tasked with a level of oversight for cross-departmental IT practice, strategic planning for information technology in Stanislaus County has not been operationalized on a fixed schedule.

In 2000, an Information Technology Strategic Plan (“ITSP-2000”) was approved by the Board of Supervisors which laid out several key initiatives. In 2007, a follow-up plan, known as the Business Technology Strategy (“BTS”) was approved by the Board, carrying forward some of the key recommendations that had not been fully realized from ITSP-2000, as well as presenting a few new recommendations. These recommendations are provided in the Information Technology Strategic Plan Review section of this document.

The document that you hold in your hands – or, hopefully, that you eschewed printing and are reading in an electronic form – is the first in an on-going series of focused information technology strategic plans. This version of the Stanislaus County Information Technology Strategic Plan (“ITSP-2017”) has three fundamental goals:

  • Goal One: ITSP-2017 is intended to inform County leadership about the key challenges faced by departments today that are, to some extent, IT-related;
  • Goal Two: ITSP-2017 is intended to make key recommendations for addressing the challenges identified in Goal One;
  • Goal Three: ITSP-2017 is intended to put in place a structure for routine reporting on the status of implementation of Goal Two recommendations and for revisiting the challenges and recommendations in future ITSP updates, to occur every 36 months.

To that end, you will find that ITSP-2017 makes use of a structure planned to be incorporated into future ITSP iterations. Challenges are categorized and recommendations are tied to specific challenges. While individual challenges will change over time, the general structure of ITSP planning and reporting is likely to remain consistent. When ITSP-2020 is published, it will include a section describing the implementation of ITSP-2017 recommendations – what worked and what did not. That section (“Information Technology Strategic Plan Review”) in this version of the ITSP is more summary in scope than readers should expect of future versions.


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