CASE STUDY
VALUE-BASED OPTIMIZATION OF IT INVESTMENTS AT BC GOVERNMENT
The Office of the Chief Information Officer
(OCIO) leads strategy, policy, and standards for
telecommunications, information technology, and
IT security for the Province of British Columbia. The
OCIO manages the Information Management /
Information Technology (IM/IT) capital investment
portfolio for 24 ministries and offices across the
province of British Columbia.
In December 2012, Treasury Board mandated a
deputy ministers’ committee with responsibility
for all of government’s IM/IT capital investments,
including:
• prioritizing government’s IM/IT investments from a total cost of ownership perspective, and;
• maximizing the lifecycle value government
derives from its IM/IT investments.
This led to the creation of the IM/IT Capital
Investment Branch, which acts centrally to provide
portfolio management in the project selection
process of minor capital IT projects.
Risk-Based Planning & Investment Optimization The BC Government invests approximately $100 million per year in capital on IT to bring the highest quality services to British Columbians. They needed a solution to help them plan, manage and optimize their IM/IT investments more strategically, across ministries and offices with distinct interests and competing priorities. They were facing two key challenges:
1. Management of existing applications: The IM/IT portfolio consists of more than 1,600 applications, of which approximately 40% are legacy applications. Audits of IM/IT initiatives across government recommended that improvements be made to the management of these applications to help mitigate the risk of failure.
2. Investments in new applications: The processes and tools used to analyze and prioritize IM/IT capital investment proposals were rudimentary and unable to quickly and efficiently carry out the robust analysis required. They needed a comprehensive solution that could help them evaluate investment requests and allocate IT capital spend in a consistent and defensible way across a diverse group of initiatives.
Previously, these two processes were handled independently and the government was seeking a solution to provide a better picture of the whole application lifecycle and maximize portfolio value.www.gov.bc.ca
CASE STUDY: BC Government
In 2016, the BC Government implemented the Copperleaf C55
Asset Investment Planning & Management (AIPM) solution to
enable end-to-end management of investments. All new minor
IM/IT capital requests (up to $20 million) are now valued, optimized
and prioritized in C55 using 46 different value measures. This
comprehensive approach addresses audit concerns presented by
the Auditor General and improves alignment with BC’s Strategic
Plan and the #BCTECH Strategy.
The Copperleaf Value Framework in C55 provides the decision-
making criteria and governance to manage IT asset expenditures
across multiple government ministries and offices, including:
• Value measures that align to the government’s strategic
priorities, and provide the ability to identify broader themes
and benefits from investments (e.g. addressing legacy apps
and moving off mainframe)
• Real-time modeling and dynamic projections, including
optimization of the investment portfolio alternatives given a
constrained budget
• Tools for project prioritization and risk identification
• Help in maintaining a comprehensive and accurate registry
of applications
• Transparent, fact-based demonstration of the need for additional
funding and the benefits derived from projects
Aligning investment decisions with the BC Government Strategic PlanOne of the unique challenges associated with the project was the
fact that C55 would be used across different ministries and offices
with varying interests and competing priorities (i.e. Agriculture,
Education, Energy & Mines, etc.). As a result, trade-off decisions
need to be made considering a broad spectrum of value—from
hard financial benefits to societal and environmental benefits.
They need to compare for example, a proposal for an investment
in a brand new IT solution in health care vs. an investment to
address a legacy application in justice vs. an environmental
monitoring application replacement, etc.
The Copperleaf Value Framework was configured to provide a
basis for how all of these diverse investments would be evaluated
and prioritized in C55. Copperleaf led structured workshops with
key stakeholders across the government to ensure that all of the
different value measures that needed to be represented in the value
framework were accounted for, and come to agreement on how to
value risk and benefits in a way that aligns with the BC Government’s
Strategic Plan. The final Value Framework is shown in Figure 1.
BC GOVERNMENT
$100 MillionIM/IT ANNUAL CAPITAL SPEND
27,000EMPLOYEES
1,600
24
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT/ INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
PORTFOLIO
MINISTRIES & OFFICES
APPLICATIONS
> Figure 1: All new IM/IT requests for up to $20 million in capital are evaluated, optimized and prioritized in C55 using 46 different value measures.
Investment optimization & data-driven decisions One of the government’s key objectives was to be able to maximize
return on a constrained budget. C55’s multi-constraint optimization
technology can evaluate any number of dissimilar projects against
a common framework to identify the highest-value combination of
investments that respects all constraints.
C55 also provides the ability to create any number of “what-if”
scenarios (i.e. what-if we increase the budget by 10%?) to compare
and contrast different levels of funding to come to agreement on the
best overall investment strategy. Unlike other solutions, C55 considers
funding, resource and timing requirements, resulting in a realistic plan
that can be accomplished within a given set of constraints.
Benefits and Improvements RealizedThe C55 system went live in November 2016 and will be used to
manage investments for fiscal year 2018. Concept Cases and Business
Cases are being entered and submitted in C55, making it easier for
employees to collaborate and track their investment requests from
inception through to approval. Both Concept Cases and Business
Cases use relevant value measures to assess hard and soft benefits,
as well as risk mitigation, and to calculate projected investment value.
The BC Government expects this streamlined investment planning
process to reduce cycle times for Business Case development
and shorten time for review and approval. For example, portfolio
modeling exercises that previously took weeks and months to
prepare can now be done on demand during committee meetings.
COPPERLEAF VALUE FRAMEWORK FOR THE BC GOVERNMENT
Benefits and Improvements Realized
Increased value for money: The goal of the project was to optimize the value of the IM/IT minor
capital portfolio by prioritizing spend on investments that deliver
the greatest return given a constrained budget. C55 helps ensure
that value-based decision making is used to align new investment
proposals to government priorities, and optimization within C55
helps to model scenarios with the highest value for money.
Improved application risk management:C55 has replaced the labour-intensive Application Health Check
spreadsheet (160,000 data elements recreated bi-annually) with
a dynamic, user-friendly interface. All asset data is now stored in
C55 allowing the government to see which aging applications
present the greatest risk and need replacement. This provides
greater insight into the impact of investments on asset health
and the spend profile of the entire portfolio and significantly
reduces effort for end users to update.
Capital budget increase approved:C55 provides real-time modeling and creates dynamic projections,
allowing governance committees to evaluate different funding and
investment scenarios. The IM/IT Capital Investment Branch was able
to demonstrate due diligence and provide evidence to support
a request for increased funding by using C55 to demonstrate the
benefits that could be achieved and the risk that would be mitigated.
Enhanced reporting and analytics:C55’s dashboards show the 10-year capital forecast and all of the
investments that have been approved, are pending approval, and are
currently executing. Users can drill down and view this information
by government sector and ministry at the click of a button,
eliminating the manual effort that went into producing reports.
Copperleaf Technologies2920 Virtual Way, Suite 140Vancouver, BC V5M 0C4 Canada www.copperleaf.com
Streamlined processes:C55’s Workflows streamline the process ministries use to submit
minor capital requests to the IM/IT Capital Investment Branch for
review. This eliminates duplication of effort across ministries and
offices, and improves the management and tracking of projects
as they progress through their lifecycles.
Transparent, fact-based decisions:C55 provides better insight into the 1,600 applications that exist
across government. This enables the government to rationalize the
portfolio while increasing opportunities for cross-government sharing
and re-use of pre-existing applications to solve new problems.
“ With Copperleaf’s C55 solution, a product made right here in B.C., we have established a more rigorous process to ensure we’re aligning our spending decisions with the initiatives that are most critical to citizens and businesses in BC.” — Amrik Virk, Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services
BC Government
CASE STUDY: BC Government
> Amrik Virk, Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services, with Copperleaf CEO Judi Hess. C55 supports decision making on approximately $430 million in IT funding requests across ministries and improves alignment with the #BCTECH Strategy.