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How did you learn about the company and your department?
I developed a 90-day plan to understand the organization and its dynamics, the status of projects, the risks -- security, project delivery. I met with all the senior executives. I did my rounds. In the first couple of months, I met everyone in my department on a one-on-one basis and discussed their opinions about the organization. I had a 360-degree picture from the president down to everyone inside the team.
What did you learn?
We used six different flavors of Unix. I added a seventh. (Laughs.)
We didn't have an IT strategic plan. I wanted a report and a 180-day plan to take action. The 180-day action plan was developed as a personal plan to understand strengths and weaknesses of the organization and what issues needed to be addressed immediately, in the medium term, and long term. One of the outcomes of the 180 plan was the IT strategic plan that set the long-term IT direction and a number of deliverables. Another outcome was the decision to implement COBIT as our governance framework; also the new organization structure, skills inventory, etc.
I spent some time and effort to explain the [strategic plan] concept to business leaders. There was recognition that there was a need. I haven't received too much pushback.
What are your big IT projects right now?
The big project is implementation of smart meters. We're replacing mechanical meters with electric meters, microcomputers that will capture usage information and feed back to a server to help the government and the consumer to manage their electric needs. Now the rates are the same regardless of time of use, at peak or nonpeak hours. The direction is to go to time-of-use metering, but first the government has to change its regulation. Once the new regulations are in place, we'll be ready. That might be two years in the future.
Deploying an outage management system is another big project. We're using SPL WorldGroup, which was recently acquired by Oracle. The system locates where an outage occurs and how to deploy crews, scheduling and prioritizing. We've been implementing that for the last year.
What can IT bring to the business?
There are two key contributions IT will make. One is service-oriented architecture (SOA) and infrastructure. It's a five-year project to build the infrastructure. Smart meters are the foundation.
The second is establishing a business intelligence department. That's a three-year program. The function didn't exist in IT; I created a new area. There's a big capital push to replace poles and infrastructure in the city. The COO requires great information to make good decisions. That's where business intelligence will help.
Michael Ybarra is a contributing writer for SearchCIO-Midmarket.com. Write to him at editor@ciodecisions.com.
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