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Results: Value for money - Part 2

ICT investment practice

Greater value may be realised from ICT investment where it closely supports the strategic aims of the organisation, where both ICT-enabled and non-ICT-enabled investments can be overseen and managed as a portfolio and where processes exist to reflect on and improve ICT performance.

Eighty-three percent of responding CIOs indicated that their organisation had an Information Systems Strategic Plan (ISSP) or equivalent (Table 4). Forty-three percent of responding organisations had an ISSP both updated in the last year and signed off by the organisation's Chief Executive (CE), characteristics that could signify the degree of connection between the ISSP and overall strategic intent of the organisation.

Key information about all an organisation's (ICT-enabled and non-ICT-enabled) current investments being collected together in a single place is a prerequisite of the discipline of portfolio management. Seventy-three percent of CIOs that responded indicated that they had this.

However, relatively few organisations benchmark their practices against others with 26 percent of responding CIOs indicating that their organisation had undertaken a form of capability maturity assessment in 2007/2008. Of reported capability maturity assessment areas, Service Delivery was the most common (17 percent of all responding organisations).

Table 4

Government ICT investment practice by organisation size and type (30 June 2008)

Total number of responding organisations Has ISSP Portfolio of investments maintained Capability maturity assessment undertaken Capability maturity assessment area7
Projects Programmes Portfolios Service delivery Software engineering Other
Percent8
Organisation size9
<50 employees 10 3 60 10 0 0 0 0 0 0
50–99 employees 6 4 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
100–499 employees 36 30 81 22 14 0 3 19 6 3
500–999 employees 14 11 64 50 14 7 0 29 14 14
1000–4999 employees 29 26 69 31 21 14 7 17 0 7
5000 or more employees 10 9 70 20 0 0 0 20 0 0
Organisation type
Central government 93 75 76 24 12 4 2 14 3 5
State owned enterprise 12 8 50 42 17 8 8 42 8 0
Overall 105 83 73 26 12 5 3 17 4 5

Table 5

Properties of government Information Systems Strategic Plans (ISSPs) (30 June 2008)

Updated within last year
Signed off by
Chief Executive		 yes no don't know no ISSP Overall
Percent10
yes 43 21 1 0 65
no 10 4 0 0 13
don't know 1 3 1 0 5
no ISSP 0 0 0 17 17
Overall 53 28 2 17 100

Note: Due to rounding, some figures may not add to stated total

'Competing priorities' was the most commonly cited factor restricting the implementation of new ICT (56 percent of responding CIOs indicated this restricted ICT implementation to a 'high' degree), followed by budget constraints (41 percent). These were also the top cited factors in 200611.

Figure 2
Graph showing factors highly restricting the implementation of new ICT (30 June 2008)

Factors highly restricting the implementation of new ICT (30 June 2008)


Table 6

Factors restricting government implementation of new ICT (30 June 2008)

Degree of restriction
Factor High Moderate Low Not at all
Percent12
Competing priorities 56 31 9 4
Budget constraints 41 35 16 8
Availability of qualified ICT personnel 26 37 29 9
Internal resistance to change 10 34 41 15
Lack of perceived benefits 8 25 53 14
Commercially available ICT products not meeting needs 7 31 45 17
Security or privacy concerns 7 16 61 16
Rate at which new versions of software introduced 4 33 47 16

Note: Due to rounding, percentages may not add to 100

Footnotes

[7 Organisations that indicated that a capability maturity assessment was undertaken may not have subsequently named the area or may have undertaken capability maturity assessment in more than one area so areas percentages may not add to the stated total for 'capability maturity assessment undertaken' ]

[8 Percentages are of all responding organisations in each size or type ]

[9 Number of employees is an estimate derived from a variety of sources including annual reports, the State Services Commission's Human Resource Capability Survey, organisation websites, and the number of reported ICT users. ]

[10 Percentages are of all 105 responding organisations ]

[11 Government Use of ICT Survey 2006, Statistics New Zealand. ]

[12 Percentages are of all 105 responding organisations ]


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