Since the April Project Update, progress has continued on the Validation Phase of the Informatics and IT Collaborative (IITC). To recap, the goal of this phase is to engage departmental IT and administrative leadership in understanding the informatics and IT work that takes place in departments, in addition to continuing to receive feedback and answer questions from all stakeholders, including IT and informatics staff.
The current Validation Phase (which is within Workstream 1) has three steps:
- Complete: Each department IT leader in scope for this effort received an Excel workbook that helps them perform an Asset Inventory, documenting the assets and work currently done by their IT team in service to their department. This Asset Inventory was due on March 31.
- In Progress: This will be followed by individual meetings between leaders in the Office of Informatics and IT and each department IT leader to go through their Asset Inventory in detail.
- Starting soon: Lastly, a second validation meeting with each department will include Office of Informatics and IT leaders and each department’s IT leader, chair, and chief administrative officer. These will occur from mid-May to the end of June.
Step 1 is complete and 2 is in progress as the last of the meetings with each department IT leader will finish in mid-May. The meetings in step 3 that include each department’s IT leader, chair, and chief administrative officer will begin soon.
The purpose of these meetings is for the Office of Informatics and IT to fully and deeply understand what work is taking place in each department to ensure that work and staff are represented in a future service line and users continue to have their needs met. If you are concerned that your IT leader is not aware of work in your portfolio or worried that it will not be accounted for in a future service line, this is a great time to have a conversation with your department IT leader.
Analysis of the Asset Inventories and findings from the Validation Meetings is ongoing. Although a deep analysis will also take place to inform decision-making, some early findings from the Validation Meetings that have occurred so far include:
- Multiple cost- and time-saving opportunities for license sharing of multiple forms of software. While not entirely surprising, this opportunity is now visible to department leadership and will be an evidence-based decision.
- More options for staff coverage. Particularly in departments with smaller informatics and IT teams, scheduling vacation and other forms of leave is a challenge when coverage is necessary. A larger unified team will introduce more flexibility for leave and day-to-day operations.
A fuller analysis is ongoing and feedback and data gathered during this Validation Phase will be used to refine current plans. All IT and informatics staff are invited to attend the Pre-Transition Meeting on June 15 at 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.