JLMIT Meeting Summary

 

Meeting Date/Time: 1-7-09 10:00 am-11:30am

Location: Chinook Building, Room 126

 

Attendees: Steve Coffing (Transit), Polly Davis (ADR), Gary Hocking (DNRP), Jim Meith (HRD), Katie Moriarty (DES), Behnaz Nelson (IFPTE Local 17), Judy O'Leary (Public Health), Matt Pope (DOT), Bob Railton (DES), Betty Sorbo (Teamsters Local 117), Peg Taglianetti (OIRM), Caroline Whalen (DES), Christine Ynzunza (OIRM)

 

Agenda

 

·          Meeting summary

·          Employee Survey

·          New PDQ Form

·          DES Structure Transition Plans – Presentation and Questions

 

Meeting Summary

 

Meeting notes from 12/10/08 were approved pending any further comments from those not attending.  [No further comments were received.]

 

Employee Survey

 

Chris said the Employee Survey was not yet available.  Patti would be presenting it at the next meeting.

 

New PDQ Form

 

Chris stated that they are still waiting to receive the new PDQ form.  Stephanie Hayes will be presenting it to the HR staff when it is ready.

 

DES Structure Plan

 

Katie described how the DES planning had been put several months behind in getting started compared to other groups.  The previous Interim ITSDM had left the County.  An Interim Reorg Planning Team has been put together, including several members of DES management, OIRM leadership, and a consultant.  Katie identified issues the group faces:

 

 

Funding: There are currently 12 different funds that DES has to rely on.  Caroline described the complexity of the funding structure that make it challenging to get money moved where it is needed in a timely fashion.

 

Support: Staff are used to reliable desktop support.  Under the Dept. X model, OIRM DCS (Distributed Computing Services) will no longer be providing that support to the departments.  DES has been budgeted for four FTE’s from DCS.  However, they have not had full budget control over those resources.  The questions are how to effectively transfer the four FTE’s over to DES, and how to have full funding control over the services. 

 

ABT: The ABT (Accountable Business Transformation) project contains many unknowns that will affect DES planning.  The ABT project is slated to continue through 2012, at which time it should be fully implemented.  It’s not clear at this time how all the disparate financial systems around the County will be integrated, and how they will be maintained in the future.  It is still being considered where the support should sit for the new systems.  Enterprise systems by definition will be supported by OIRM.  OIRM will also be responsible for legacy systems.  Thus, how systems are defined will determine which group has control over and responsibility for them.  Options being considered are:

 

 

Katie said her team presented a potential end state to the CIO.  The response was that it was too soon to consider that, and they should just present an interim structure for 2009.

 

Reporting, Technology: The concept of tech people reporting to tech managers was discussed.  Currently, there are many IT staff reporting to non-IT business managers.  In the interim structure, people without a direct manager will be reporting directly to Katie.  This will give Katie at least 18 direct reports.  Katie said this is an overload.  Thus, she proposed to have staff continue reporting to business managers for the time being.  She would fill in the pieces, for example, for evaluations and reclasses.  Union members brought up that this was going against the core principles of the reorg to have IT employees reporting to IT managers.  Behnaz suggested that employees could be empowered to take on leadership roles.  Employees could be identified to be trained to move in to supervisory roles.  Some employees could become tech leads and move toward leadership positions that way.  Katie said she would take this under advisement.

 

It was asked where the staff were going to be seated after restructuring.  Katie said this was still being considered.  Some groups have not been established where they will in the new structure; thus it’s not possible to say where they will be sitting.  If they are in DES, generally they should move the 6th Floor near where Katie is now sitting (North end of 6th Floor).  Several questions were asked about the DCS group in particular.  Katie said she would be informed by the input present in this forum.

 

It was asked when more decisions where going to be made about the new structure.  Katie said they need to have an approach by March 31 (end of Q1) in order to prepared for the 2010 budget.  DES will be submitting a supplemental budget proposal to Council to obtain funding control for their proposed structure.  It was asked when this would occur.  Caroline said it would be done within the month.

 

Katie addressed matrix relations for the new structure.  She said that the tech and business people need to work together more.  ABT needs to interact with all County staff and processes need to be put in place to enable that.  The business-to-business interactions need to improve.

 

The HR issues Katie identified were:

 

 

As for the money, they are not going to have one big pot and will need to work through different budget buckets to get things accomplished.  Culture change: Everyone is affected by the changes in processes and it will be challenging.  Reclasses: People currently have titles that don’t show all that they do.  Some new supervisory and management roles are called out and a challenge will be find funding to fill them.

 

The meeting adjourned around 11:30 am.

 

Follow-up Items

 

 

Next Meetings

 

Jan. 21 10:00 am – 12:00 noon

Chinook Room 120

 

Tentative Agenda for Next Meeting

 

·          Employee Survey

·          Sharepoint

·          DCS