Michigan state government officials unveiled today a new strategic information technology plan that sets goals and targets to improve access to services, foster collaboration across agencies and other communities, make government more efficient, and attract and retain employees.
The 209-page plan – including 12 appendices on different IT subjects – is focused on improving education, homeland security, health care, government, the economy and the environment by establishing specific targets and metrics for several strategies.
For example, state officials want to double the number of transactional self-service applications and the rate of electronic self-service channels in the next 18 months to improve citizen access to government services. That goal also includes improving protection of personal data by implementing an identity and access management mechanism by 2007, among other steps.
To improve sharing and collaboration, state officials want to establish a data warehouse enterprise strategy this year and develop a strategy to determine what data can be shared across all agencies by the end of the year.
To attract and retain IT employees, officials have outlined steps to improve professional development, benchmark state IT compensation with the technology industry and provide more avenues for improving communication and morale.
Additionally, state government officials will look more closely at seven technology applications to determine where they may benefit several agencies or whether they can be adopted enterprisewide. The technologies include citizen transactions, data integration, enterprise call centers, collaborative tools, mobile computing, shared administrative services and integrated infrastructure.
“This plan sets the direction and focus for our department for the next five years, and we think it can have a positive impact on growing Michigan’s economy, keeping Michigan at the forefront when it comes to government technology,” Teri Takai, chief information officer and director of the state’s IT department, said in a press release.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
