IT Consolidation Brings Efficencies

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2009

The Maricopa County Regional Development Services Agency is comprised of five independent departments; Planning & Development, Air Quality, Environmental Services, Emergency Management, and Equipment Services. While each department has an independent mission, specialized mandates and unique funding sources, each interacts and responds to issues in common with other departments of the Agency. Yet, each department had its own internal information technology support staff and a myriad of supporting IT applications and processes. By 2006, it became apparent that decentralized IT was inhibiting the Agency’s departments from maximizing on synergies, limiting resource sharing, and reducing collective purchasing power potential. It was also clear that centralization would allow for the strategic direction necessary to capture savings, improve both related and unrelated business processes, and leverage emerging technologies. RDSA began IT reorganization with the hiring of a Technology Director position with the express purpose of combining duplicate IT functions to optimize staff, replacing duplicated permitting applications with a single overarching application, identifying other IT areas where efficiencies could be gained, and creating meaningful measurement statistics that could guide further action. This reorganization allowed RDSA gain a number of benefits, both financial and operational.