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32 <br />PRIORITY LEVEL ONE <br />Staffing Needs within IT Department: <br />There is a clear need for additional staff within the IT Department. In order for the department to <br />operate as a high - performing organization, sufficient staff is required to complete projects in a timely <br />manner, as well as maintain operational level support. Without increasing the staff in the IT <br />department, many of the projects requested and recommended in this plan will not be possible to <br />implement. Key positions needed in the IT department include: 4 Senior Systems Analysts, 1 <br />Applications Division Manager, 1 Network Engineer, and 1 GIS Addressing Coordinator. Additional <br />detail on these needed positions can be found in Appendix C. <br />One noted process area of improvement within IT staffing can be facilitated by establishing a key <br />Business Relationship Manager roles within the Information Technology Department. In this model, <br />specific IT staff will rotate between departments to assess business process, gain better working <br />knowledge of daily operations, and partner with departmental staff to create technical solutions and <br />enhancements to operational, tactical, and strategic issues. Essentially, the Business Relationship <br />Managers will assist in developing proactive solutions to business unit problems or challenges, versus <br />the often reactive process used currently. The adoption of this model does presume an increase of IT <br />Department's FTEs in order to achieve the level of service expected by the departments. <br />Information Technology Governance Structure: <br />IT Governance is becoming an increasingly important topic in the public sector. The role of the <br />governance is to ensure that IT is aligned with the business and delivers value, its performance is <br />measured, its resources properly allocated and its risks mitigated. The IT Governance Council is not <br />directly involved with traditional maintenance and infrastructure projects, but rather, addresses the <br />various competing demands for IT staff time and IT investment dollars related to enterprise and /or <br />departmental IT projects. For example, the Governance Council would assess all IT project requests <br />from various departments during the budget process and then make recommendations for funding <br />and project prioritization (related to IT staff commitments) in a manner that best serves the needs of <br />the County as a whole, not the individual desires of competing departments. <br />The IT Governance structure should be established by the IT Department, but the County should <br />ensure that senior management is involved in the Governance process, serving as Governance <br />30 <br />