CASE EXAMPLE: GEORGIA TECHNOLOGY AUTHORITY

In his recent book, The Strategic CIO: Changing the Dynamics of the Business Enterprise, Phil Weinzimer provides details about the deployment of an enterprise governance system by the Georgia Technology Authority $($GTA$).$ Following is a summary of that case study. The GTA handles IT services and operations for the state of Georgia. The GTA saves taxpayer money across $119$ state agencies by operating a process for project evaluation, review, governance, and tracking. With as much as $$450$ million in project budgets at stake each year, managing risk of failure and maintaining control is a priority.

The GTA implemented the APO system in $2012$ as an integral part of Georgia$$s enterprise management suite $($GEMS$),$ automating the Georgia critical panel review process. In its sixth year of operation, with APO supporting the enterprise project management office $($EPMO$),$ these reviews have saved taxpayers an estimated $$280$ million that would have been lost to failed or challenged technology projects.

The GEMS project dashboard provides a visual representation of the quantitative and qualitative data to drive the key project indicator gauges to reflect ranges within red, yellow, or green, a benefit they never had before. Knowing the range of each color helps the project managers and critical review panel interpret the degree of risk more effectively than the previous process.

Prior to implementing GEMS, the GTA$$s greatest challenge was the time to capture data, prepare analyses $($so$-$called project boards$),$ and display project status. The manual process of collecting project data from the project managers and consolidating it into a presentation package for the critical panel review was manual and time$-$consuming. With GEMS, dashboard views of data are available online, any time, from anywhere.

The value of GEMS is seen today across the GTA. Key What are some of the biggest challenges the GTA faced in this project? How did they address the required capabilities? What were some of their biggest implementation challenges?