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Management Audit of San Francisco's IT Practices
The Budget Analyst released the Management Audit of San Francisco's Information Technology Practices on October 3, 2007.
The audit found that rather than the City taking a forward-thinking approach and implementing systems that coordinate efficiently across departments and that are responsive to the ever-changing industry of information technology, the City continues to let individual departments attempt to maintain basic functionality on their own, barely managing to keep up with a dynamic and exponentially growing industry and the demands of a citizenry that expects more and more with each new technological development.
City departments, and by extension the City overall, place a higher priority on immediate service delivery over long-term information technology systems functionality. As a result, most technological upgrades happen only when required to do so by law or because the existing systems have failed. Departments have little incentive, financial or otherwise, to willingly develop or deploy information technology systems that exceed a bare minimum threshold and few departments have a mature enough approach to their information technology to have the necessary planning processes which would allow them to plan with a long-term approach.
As a result, citywide information technology planning, processes, and projects occur quite differently from department to department, resulting in redundant systems and lost opportunities for best practices improvements as discussed in the following Sections 1 through 6 of this report.
This report contains six findings and 32 recommendations, of which 29 are directed to the Chair of the Committee on Information Technology or the Director of the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services. Two of the 32 recommendations are directed to the Office of Contract Administration and the Controller respectively. One recommendation is directed to the Board of Supervisors, recommending adoption of an Administrative Code provision establishing a citywide information technology capital planning process under the direction of the Committee on Information Technology, as discussed in Section 4 of this report.
City departments, and by extension the City overall, place a higher priority on immediate service delivery over long-term information technology systems functionality. As a result, most technological upgrades happen only when required to do so by law or because the existing systems have failed. Departments have little incentive, financial or otherwise, to willingly develop or deploy information technology systems that exceed a bare minimum threshold and few departments have a mature enough approach to their information technology to have the necessary planning processes which would allow them to plan with a long-term approach.
As a result, citywide information technology planning, processes, and projects occur quite differently from department to department, resulting in redundant systems and lost opportunities for best practices improvements as discussed in the following Sections 1 through 6 of this report.
This report contains six findings and 32 recommendations, of which 29 are directed to the Chair of the Committee on Information Technology or the Director of the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services. Two of the 32 recommendations are directed to the Office of Contract Administration and the Controller respectively. One recommendation is directed to the Board of Supervisors, recommending adoption of an Administrative Code provision establishing a citywide information technology capital planning process under the direction of the Committee on Information Technology, as discussed in Section 4 of this report.
The report can be read here or downloaded as a PDF file here.