Central Ohio IT Partnership – Public Performance Partners

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CONTEXT

Public sector organizations in Ohio from school districts to townships have been under increased fiscal pressure since the last recession and a range of cuts in state funding. Their budgetary choices are to: cut services, attempt to raise local taxes or look for cooperative opportunities among different political subdivisions to share services or resources and thereby create efficiencies that ultimately save money.

Scroll down the page to view members of the Central Ohio IT Partnership discuss the project.

While the State of Ohio implemented a series of major cuts to local governments and schools beginning in 2011, the state also made some changes in law that allowed all public entities to share services or work together on common problems. Additionally, the state has launched several programs since 2011 that attempt to mitigate the cuts and ease school districts or local governments into shared service environments. These programs all provide grant funding or no-interest loans which can be used to fund planning or implementation of cooperative efficiency projects – even those among groups which contain both education and governmental institutions.

CENTRAL OHIO PUBLIC SECTOR IT PARTNERSHIP

Born from this environment under the leadership of the Metropolitan Educational Council/ITC and project management of Public Performance Partners, Inc. (P3) of Columbus, Ohio was the Central Ohio Public Sector IT Partnership. A unique aspect of the partnership is that it is one of the first efforts since 2011 which contains both public education and governmental institutions. The nine collaborating public partners include:

City of Dublin
City of Grandview Heights
City of Upper Arlington
City of Westerville
Educational Service Center of Central Ohio
Columbus and Franklin County Metropolitan Park District (MetroParks)
Metropolitan Educational Council (MEC)
Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC)
Prairie Township

IT ASSESSMENT

The partners recognized that among the many potential shared services paths to explore, information technology provided perhaps the lowest hanging fruit. Several factors were at play in the decision but chief among them were two obvious facts. First, some partners were already positioned with significant IT capacity that could be shared with others creating a natural division of providers and customers. Second, from GIS to data center operations, the IT needs of the majority of partners were similar enough that there exists a high probability that at least one or several IT shared services initiatives would have a high percentage probability of success in terms of ultimately creating efficiencies and cutting costs.

The Project

Bret Longberry of the Metropolitan Educational Council - MEC served as the lead agency for the group's LGIF grant. — Bret Longberry of the Metropolitan Educational Council – MEC served as the lead agency for the group’s LGIF grant.

In April 2013, the partners began an independent IT assessment of each organization performed by Quick Solutions, Inc. of Westerville, Ohio (QSI). The assessment was funded through a State of Ohio Local Government Innovation Fund grant initiated under the Metropolitan Educational Council (MEC) as lead agency and with P3 serving as project manager. The MEC was a natural choice as lead agency due to its experience and sophistication with IT shared services in the public education realm – the MEC is home to one of Ohio’s public education Information Technology Centers.

The project goal was to perform an analysis of the IT operations and capacity of each partner and devise a plan for potential shared services projects going forward.

QSI began with extensive questionnaires for each partner and followed up with in-person interviews of partners’ IT teams as well as on-site tours of partner data centers, server rooms and workspaces. In early October 2013, QSI published its report of the assessment and a roadmap outlining potential shared services options for the partners moving forward.

Roadmap

While not an exhaustive outline of the results of the QSI Assessment, reported here are some of the main findings of the assessment and examples of potential roadmap projects. For a more exhaustive view of the IT Assessment, download the entire document here.

QSI validated several benefits of the Central Ohio Public Sector IT Partnership and found that:
Potential capacity providers will benefit by providing services such as infrastructure and expertise.
Potential service partners will benefit by increasing productivity from services provided by capacity providing partners.
Greater purchasing power will be achieved by all through aggregation.
QSI confirmed the high capacity partners – or potential service providers for IT services as: Dublin, MEC, Westerville and Upper Arlington.
QSI confirmed the service partners – or potential customers for IT services as: Prairie Township, Grandview Heights, MetroParks, MORPC, and the ESC of Central Ohio.

QSI identified several opportunities for future shared services projects on a roadmap that include among others:

Data Center Operations: Dublin, MEC and Westerville have facilities and capacity to host IT services such as servers and connectivity to the ESC of Central Ohio, Grandview Heights, Metro Parks, MORPC, Prairie Twp. and Upper Arlington.

Disaster Recovery (DR): Future business continuity and DR plans will be dependent upon the data center strategy. Two of the capacity partners would eventually serve as the offsite DR repository for the others. QSI also recommends including in overall business continuity plans offsite location(s) for critical staff workspace during a DR event.

Purchasing: Leverage MEC’s existing purchasing cooperative to essentially add the partners who do not currently participate. Some planning and work would be done to establish standard documents and processes where needed to facilitate the growth of the cooperative.

GIS: Dublin, Grandview Heights, MetroParks, MORPC, and Westerville all use ArcGIS systems from ESRI. Upper Arlington uses City GIS from Draftco, while Prairie Township would like to access GIS, but currently lacks the funding. The preferred strategy would be to combine infrastructure and share base maps. Numerous options can be supplied by Franklin County. QSI recommends a consolidated approach to GIS infrastructure, software, and support across partners to reduce cost and unnecessary redundancy.

Voice Over IP: This shared services strategy consists of consolidating partner phone systems to save on maintenance cost and those using analog lines will be able to save costs by moving to VOIP. Dublin’s VOIP system has excess capacity which could support all partners.

Cloud-Based Services: QSI found some opportunities for migrating those partners not already utilizing cloud-based services for business needs like email and desktop support to the cloud.

GOING FORWARD

While the strategies for collaboration and shared services outlined in the IT Assessment Roadmap entail varying degrees of difficulty to achieve, the members of the Central Ohio Public Sector IT Partnership remain committed to taking the next steps. As seen in the accompanying graphic, QSI’s recommended strategies are tiered one through three. Tier 1 strategies offer the lowest difficulty to achieve and medium to high value in terms of potential ongoing benefits to partner efficiencies and financial and other resources.

While there are differences among partners on some of the potential projects such as email, the partnership has proven thus far that public servants from widely divergent organizations can collaborate in a way that protects local identities and leverages unique organizational strengths. This assessment and partnership is a significant and necessary measurement of back-office, non-public-facing business processes that can be enhanced economically through collaboration.

As the partners move toward implementation of one or more of the strategies in Tier 1 and beyond, the Central Ohio Public Sector IT Partnership remains committed to placing efficiency and collaboration before service cuts and tax increases when confronting current constraints in revenue.