More than 5.8 million Coloradans rely on us to provide human-centric, accessible digital government services through the collaborative work we take on with our agency partners. That’s why through a suite of projects focused on building service excellence, we’re modernizing our end-to-end service delivery processes, improving product and service management, and strengthening communication to bolster internal state partnerships and increase customer satisfaction.
Completed Projects
Align Service Catalog with Best Practice Recommendations
Our agency partners rely on the products and services we provide to serve Coloradans. But it can be hard to plan budgets or understand how to efficiently use our products and services without complete information and guidance. The Service Catalog—once a PDF—is now available on its own website at oitservicecatalog.state.co.us, and showcases in detail up-to-date, critical information. From its launch on April 6, 2021. through August 31, 2022, the site has had more than 30,000 views. The team is now working to take the Service Catalog to the next level by automating it through the ServiceHub customer portal.
"OIT’s products and services are helping innovate and address issues that had been pain points for years, turning contentious relationships into successful partnerships. We see their partnership and collaboration as a key component in helping us lead the nation in bringing state of the art technology to all of DOR’s customers."
- Dan Ervin
Innovation Manager, Colorado Department of Revenue
"Don't let the debt accrue, be proactive and partner with OIT early and often. Start with process improvement events. We were able to move away from several old systems just because process improvement made them obsolete."
– Noah Begley
Training Section Manager, Health Facility Education and Quality Branch
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
Agency Tech Debt Reduction Plans
We estimate the state has at least a whopping $465 million in technical debt stemming from aging infrastructure, end-of-life applications and systems with security vulnerabilities. Tech debt is the cost of equipment and staff time to keep unsupported and insecure older technology running to deliver services. When it isn’t addressed, the consequences can be severe, and its impacts stretch across organizations.
Through our work with agency partners we’ve discovered that we can realize $10+ million in annual savings while improving accessibility and reducing security risks. In 2022, we assessed the health and overall tech debt of 1,064 applications that informed the creation of 14 tech debt reduction plans—known as Technology Planning Workbooks (TPWs). These TPWs will guide our efforts and determine if state applications need to be updated, replaced or retired.
Reducing tech debt across all state agencies will help avoid unnecessary costs, improve security risk scores, increase audit compliance, enable modernization and reallocate valuable resources to more important business needs.
eFORT Data Center Relocation Plan
The eFORT Data Center is one of the most expensive capital leases in the state’s budget. As good stewards of taxpayer dollars, we realized significant savings could be achieved by relocating hardware to the newly renovated state-owned Lakewood Data Center and moving services to the cloud. Not only will we avoid $1.6 million in annual lease costs, the state- owned data center offers modern equipment and security. In addition to reducing tech debt, the project establishes technical documentation, consolidates physical assets and expands the use of cloud infrastructure. Technical teams are currently determining where to relocate assets and services to best achieve state agencies’ needs.
Improve Enterprise Service Delivery (Infrastructure Operations Transformation)
Our new Infrastructure Operations Playbook established the foundation for improving the delivery of technology infrastructure. The Playbook includes an operational realignment, the creation of a governance model and performance monitoring plan, and key strategic initiatives to improve IT operations and keep pace with technology changes and industry trends. The standard service delivery model as part of the Playbook will improve cost management and decrease service impacts, improving the overall customer experience.
Network and Security Optimization
In our digital lives the efficient and secure operation of a network plays an important role. Networks must be able to handle more and more data due to the interconnected, real-time nature of our world. Our Network and Security Optimization project developed a plan for the most effective network design and performance at the lowest cost structure while delivering solutions that meet our customers needs and budgets.
Optimize Agency Ownership and Accountability of Biz Tech
In a digital world that requires technology for service delivery, it is important that state agencies have the business structure and capabilities to effectively partner with us. We created a framework to help our partners understand their roles and responsibilities and address the differing levels of accountability and ownership for IT. Previously, informal approaches to managing critical technology-related business responsibilities resulted in the work being delegated to OIT or vendors. Greater clarity of roles now helps agencies more effectively partner with us and align business strategy with technology support.
Product and Service Management Collaborative Roadmap
To ensure that our products and services meet and exceed customer needs, we established an incrementally improving product and service framework. This roadmap provides a formal set of processes that enable statewide product and service offerings to be introduced, improved and retired with consistency and awareness throughout the offering’s lifecycle. By innovating, creating and sustaining a demand-driven product and service portfolio, we convey modern technological value today and in the future.
Stakeholder Engagement & Communications Phase 1 & 2
Building collaborative and consultative partnerships through effective stakeholder management and communication is an important factor in measuring our success. Informed by input from more than 4,800 customers, we worked with a vendor to create a robust list of relationship management, branding and communications strategies to increase efficiency, transparency and customer satisfaction. As we implement these strategies we’ll build on feedback loops to continually strengthen customer relationships and ensure they receive timely, relevant and easy to understand communication.
Knowledge Management
Effective knowledge management is critical to ensuring that organizations can make informed decisions quickly and efficiently. OIT recognizes this importance and is taking action to establish a robust knowledge management process. This tool will help align OIT's delivery model and enable all state employees to find information in the right place at the right time. How? Within the state’s new ServiceHub Customer Portal slated to launch later this year, all questions typed in the Virtual Assistant and Search fields will quickly and automatically sort through countless knowledge base articles to deliver the most relevant and helpful answers to customers.
Currently, OIT has knowledge articles, procedures and policies in multiple locations, which makes it difficult for staff and agencies to access the information they need. In addition, the lack of centralized knowledge management could lead to adverse audit findings, data loss, and redundancies in our system to track information. OIT has developed a comprehensive plan to create a structured knowledge management system. By establishing a centralized repository and a structured knowledge management process, OIT is improving its overall efficiency, reducing the need to rediscover knowledge and ultimately saving time and resources.
Service Management Transformation
With the advent of Real-time Billing, OIT needed to radically rethink its business model. OIT’s agency customers needed a true partner in the management of technology requests, from initiation to delivery. To ensure that OIT met both these customer needs and its own financial obligations, we created a Service Management Office (SMO). The SMO works with teams across OIT to create a low-effort customer experience. With this approach, the Service Managers take responsibility for managing all service life cycles, empowering service owners to focus on technical operations and delivery to meet customers’needs.
With its launch on March 1, 2023, the SMO:
Created an SMO working group, a multi-stakeholder group that meets regularly to identify and prioritize the services and projects with the most value for Colorado residents
Collaborated to create an intuitive, logical service taxonomy to better organize and improve navigability of OIT’s catalog of services
Implemented upgrades to the Nicus finance tool which now provides OIT and agencies the ability to use data and financial analysis for more strategic stewardship of Colorado taxpayer dollars
Customer Office Transformation
The Customer Office reimaging project built an operational model to support a culture where customer experience and delivery of IT services are central to every conversation. The new Customer Office is where the technology services OIT provides and the business needs of agencies intersect. Now the front door of OIT, the Customer Office is our agency's single point of contact into and from OIT. This transformation required new processes across technology services and new responsibilities for IT Directors. IT Directors continue to focus on business relationship management, but through reimagining this role they are shifting to become a strategic partner for our customers and less operational. The operational work the ITDs are currently performing will be transferred to other roles within OIT and led by the newly formed Service Management Office.
The Customer Office Transformation includes:
Driving the customer experience in OIT through reliability and confidence in service delivery.
Leading OIT in managing customer relationships, demand and revenue.
Driving OIT to work together for improved customer experience, increased efficiency and perceived value for both customers and taxpayers.
Supporting leaders in their role as cultural champions in our reimagining journey to become the preferred IT-partner for state agencies.