Informatics and Information Technology Collaborative (IITC)

• Who: Informatics and IT staff providing services to a department via its central informatics and IT team.
• What: A series of transitional changes over a timeline that will result in a collaborative and connected team of informatics and IT staff organized into innovative service lines.
• When: The first set of changes, which occurred on July 1, 2023, will facilitate further gradual changes through 2025 and beyond.
• Why: Optimize the delivery of essential services, minimize risk, and enable greater service excellence across all departments, institutes, and centers.
• How: Engagement with stakeholders, thoughtful and measured change, communication, and feedback.

By centralizing, we are building a thriving Informatics and IT community without silos. This community will more efficient use of pooled resources which will allow for:

• Professional development and specialization opportunities
• Ability to provide expanded, high-quality services to users
• Strong connection and engagement with users
• Expanded leadership and management opportunities

• Minimize disruption of current IT services and employment structures
• Keep most IT teams intact while strengthening central direction
• Allow for thoughtful, phased implementation of service lines, training, and re-deployment of staff over a longer timeframe
• Alignment with other campus departmental IT integrations.
• Alignment with IIT and SMPH Vision, Mission & Values
  • Healthy people. Healthy communities.
  • Together, as one unified IIT team, we will support the 4 foundational areas of administrative, clinical, educational, and research
  • Together, we are advancing health and health equity through remarkable service to patients and communities, outstanding education, and innovative research.
  • Integrity and Accountability; Compassion; Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity; Excellence

Overall

• Establish SMPH as a go-to place with novel Informatics/IT capacity for new faculty recruits
• Establish technical oversight to ensure security and privacy in all Informatics and IT activities
• Provide a competitive advantage for our faculty in data-centric research
• Provide cost-effective, efficient, and agile services across the entire SMPH
• Provide growth opportunities for Informatics and IT staff
• Ensure compliance with the data-sharing agreements with hospital partners
• Avoid service duplication and wastage of funds

Staff:

• New opportunities align individual expertise with specialized positions.
• Increase equity and representation of Informatics and IT Staff in leadership positions.
• Provide centralized leadership and oversight while maintaining a sense of connection with departments.
• Support and structure well aligned to the operational needs of stakeholders.
• A unified SMPH IIT teams in a team culture that fosters the ability to maintain existing and long-standing collaborations.
• Thoughtful and functional alignment of IIT staff to service lines and responsive/effective management structure.

Service:

• Consistent service delivery to all SMPH departments, institutes, and centers.
• Service delivery to all SMPH departments, institutes, and centers remains consistent or improves as a result of unified resources.
• Existing processes are maintained and concurrently evaluated for opportunities to streamline and enhance service practices.
• Empowered and engaged SMPH IIT can speak with one voice regarding collaborations with the University of Wisconsin–Madison and UW Health.
• Facilitated updates to stakeholders when active engagement is needed.

Technology:

• Established core IIT infrastructure to mitigate or solve technical debt and total cost of ownership.
• Shared services are established to increase efficiencies.
• Thoughtful implementation of improved streamlined technology solutions.
• Service designs and decisions balance the needs of the new, larger base of SMPH users being served.
• Service designs and decisions reduce technical debt and maximize efficiency.
• Application and solution rationalization is well-designed, timely, and can evaluate more robust solutions aligned to the entire size and scale of SMPH as a whole.