Email to Rumblings:
A couple of PDFs (see docs in comments), one a set of minutes and one a"presentation", found on the Information Technology Policy Committee intranet web page, downloaded & attached for your reading pleasure.
Seems to me that the comments from Randi, Mayor's staff et. al. found herein suggest that the 'CTO Prerogative' would be a possibility. Certainly the department managements whose IT staff are subject to being absorbed have reason to be skeptical about this. They know of the previous "re-alignment" and some of their applications lost support staff positions because of it. Why wouldn't they suspect that their former staffs would be transferred to ITA, then sometime later moved to another group to work on something else?
Keep on rumbling!
Thursday, May 1, 2008
"Merger and Acquisition"
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Meeting minutes:
IT Policy Committee (ITPC)
March 20, 2008
1:00 p.m. - Room 1332, City Hall East
Minutes
Co-Chairs: Mark Wolf, AGM - Information Technology Agency, Roger Fernandez, AGM - Information Technology Agency
Project Support: Betty Ngo - Information Technology Agency, Kuljeet Arora - Information Technology Agency
Voting Membership Present: Bloemhof, Dennis - LAFD, Chang, Flora - RAP, Gillette, Bob - PW/ENG, Irvin, Bob - PW/SAN, Mfume, Rashad - PW/Board, Sampson, Carl - FIN, Sakamoto, Mike - GSD
In Attendance: Abkian, Varouj - PW-SAN, Allison, Greg - CLK,
Arora, Kuljeet - ITA, Banos, Jennifer - ITA, Gamachi, Gene - ITA,
House, James - CAO, Kampton, Joe - ITA, Khurana-Carwile, Rita - ITA, Kok, Reindert - ITA, Levin, Randi - ITA, Lee, Jimmy, McKenzie, Rosetta - LACC, Merideth, Greg - PW, Ngo, Betty - ITA, Ortiz, Jesus - ZOO, Pomjanck, Csilla - LACERS, Sato, Kurt - PW-BSL, Truong, Richard - CLK, Yoshihara, Lakshmi - ITA, Yuan-McDaniel, Eva - PLN
1. Approval of minutes for the meeting on March 20, 2008 – Mark Wolf. The minutes were approved as written.
2. Approval of Data Share Policy - The Data Share Policy was approved. Twelve members voted in favor of the policy.
3. Reports by Subcommittees
• Management of Confidential Data/Data Sharing – Nam Huynh/Greg Kung. Both Nam and Greg were not at today’s meeting. A committee member stated that the subcommittee was awaiting the outcome of the vote by the ITPC.
• IT Disaster Recovery – Deborah Wittwer/Gene Gamachi
Gene reported that the policy was written two months ago. As of today, voting on this policy is in progress.
4. Information Technology Efficiency – Randy Levin
Randi advised the committee members that the Mayor has asked her to find $15 to $20 million of efficiencies throughout the city’s technology systems in the next fiscal year. She explained that ITA’s budget for next year is a ‘keep the lights on’ kind of budget.
ITA devised an over-arching plan that will attempt to begin taking money out of the IT budget citywide. There are four components: infrastructure optimization, enterprise contracts, portfolio management, and application project skill authorization. Randi shared information received from Gartner, and produced a list of the top ten causes of high IT costs:
a). Redundant and non standard systems
b). No mechanism to control the demand for IT
c). Bloated application portfolios
d). Misaligned staff, poor leverage of people
e). Poor IT processes
f). Tracking of IT projects
g). Weak project prioritization
h). Lack of visibility into IT costs
i). High levels of hidden spending
j). Failure to push IT costs back to business
Randy also spoke in detail about consolidating current IT contracts and portfolio management. She advised that ITA is looking at the different applications the City currently has; and she wants to reduce the number of redundant applications the City is utilizing.
5. Open Items
Roger advised that 3-1-1 will be closed for the Caesar Chavez holiday.
Eva advised the committee that Building and Safety as well as Planning and Engineering have applied for a funding request to capture building footprints for the entire City. The package was for $2.1 million, and it was approved by the Construction Services Committee (OneStop). It will be in Planning and Land Use Management Committee next Tuesday.
Randi spoke briefly about requests for video surveillance coming through Council. She suggested that these requests come through ITA first, because of problems with the network. Gene is working on finding the implications on the City’s network with video added.
6. Informational Briefing
a. Virtualization Licensing Survey – Gene Gamachi
Gene spoke about the ITA Rationalization Study being conducted with IBM. IBM will come in and assess server infrastructure, the cost of utilization and attempt to determine whether the City should be virtualizing the servers. The assessment should take three to six weeks to complete since some of the servers are owned by other City departments, but most are managed by ITA. After the assessment is completed, they will come back with recommendations as to how best to begin virtualization.
Gene also advised that ITA is working on an enterprise-wide license for VMWare which includes DWP, Airports, and Harbor. He stated that a survey will be sent to all departments, asking how many licenses each department has currently, and the needs in the future. This should enable the City to get an enterprise-wide license.
b. Oracle Licensing Survey – Jose Alvarez
Jose advised the group that a survey will be sent to all departments to identify the number of current licenses and future needs. The survey will help to better negotiate with Oracle for future purchases. In addition, he spoke about updating the current Oracle contracts the City uses. He explained how it is currently handled, and the plans for future handling of contracts. He explained that ITA has sent GSD a request to
establish a new City contract. The new contract piggybacks on the current contract that Oracle has with the Federal government. It will provide a 52% discount on new purchases.
c. MS Compliance Audit Update – Mark Wolf
Mark gave a brief update on the Microsoft Software Compliance audit. He advised that they intend to analyze our software licensing for desktops and servers citywide. The normal process is to bring in an outside partner to go through the inventory to determine what is actually in place. The process is called ALP, and they make recommendations for ‘best practices’ in terms of consolidation for licensing. The first phase will be a pilot in ITA. He advised the committee that ITA will keep departments posted, and that they should be prepared for this process to come to them.
Presentation:
IT Services Optimization
1. Infrastructure Optimization
Server Consolidation/Virtualization
Greening Data Center– Power/Cooling
Infrastructure Strategy
Data Center Consolidation
Network Upgrade
2. Enterprise Contracts
Ruthless Standardization/leveraged buys
Hardware (Desktops PC’s & Servers)
Software (Database, GIS, etc.)
Tracking & Follow Up
City-wide IT
Optimization Initiatives
3. Portfolio Management
Align business and IT strategies
Gain visibility into total IT investments: Labor & Non-labor
Resource Management & Capacity Planning & Risk Mgmt
IT Services Optimization
Result: Reduced IT Total Spend
4. Application/Project/Skill Optimization
Application & Services Consolidation
Retool IT Skills & Processes
Reducing Overall Cost
Increase On-time Delivery & Quality of Systems
Top 10 Causes of High IT Costs
1. Redundant and non-standard systems
2. No mechanism to control demand for IT; no SLAs
3. Bloated application portfolios (with lots of custom software)
4. Misaligned staff; poor leverage of people;
inappropriate use of contract labor
5. Poor IT processes
6. Chaotic purchasing and tracking of IT assets
7. Weak project prioritization and management practices
(too many of the wrong projects are still being done)
8. A lack of visibility into IT costs
9. High levels of “hidden” spending
10. Failure to push IT-related costs back to the business
Seems Randi was already working on the consolidation plan under direction of the Mayors Office in March.
LAFD, City Clerk and PW staff were present. Either she wasn't clear or they didn't get it.
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