CRJ Technology Team and the Technology Advisory Committee

Goals & Purpose

The CRJ Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) will work closely with the Chief Financial Officer and Director of IT, providing counsel on the development, implementation, evaluation, and refinement of the organization's technology plan. This committee will represent a broad range of perspectives across CRJ. Collectively, the CFO, DIT and TAC will be n as the Technology Team.

The TAC and Technology Team (Team) responsibilities will be as follows:

  • Determine overall strategy and priorities for the technology at CRJ

·  Determine how to approach major technology initiatives. When a potential new project is identified, the Team will be responsible for (That is: all projects must go through and DOCUMENT the following process:

·  Develop a cost-benefit and priority analysis to determine whether to (or confirm that we should) move forward.

·  Establish clear metrics that capture business, user, and technical viewpoints for how success will be measured on the project.

·  Define selection criteria to evaluate potential vendors and/or approach.

·  Research/Document potential implementation options (including in-house development, buying a corporate product, open source software, and fully outsourcing) and evaluate them against the selection criteria.

·  Make the final decision of which vendor best fits CRJ's short- and long-term needs.

·  Ensure that there are clear lines of responsibility for who will:

-  Ensure regular communication with all stakeholders and confirm buy-in

-  Execute the project (implementation and project management)

-  Manage the cultural/process changes that come with the new technology

-  Manage ongoing support and training

·  Evaluate the project against the success metrics defined at the outset; if the project is not meeting those goals, the committee will work with the IT department to determine how to improve the results.

·  Conduct an after-action review to see how the implementation went, and if CRJ can learn any lessons to improve future projects or vendor selection processes.

  • Monitor the success of existing systems and support.
  • Act as a technology evangelists (as well as constituent sounding board) within CRJ.

The Technology Team as an entity is NOT responsible for:

  • Implementation, project management, or vendor management (IT Department would do this, or business unit staff might if project was specific to them)
  • Providing direct support or training to users (IT Department)
  • Determining the staffing structure for the IT Department (Rick and Sergio)
  • Creating job descriptions, work plans, and performance metrics for specific IT employees (Sergio)

Meeting Schedule:

  • The Technology Team, including the TAC will meet as follows:

◦  Suggest that we meet once per month (with webex as a viable option to attending in person)

▪  Generally

  • Review status of major projects (Project manager Report)
  • Review status of priorities list, reconfirm priorities and timelines as well as a review of status of non-major initiatives
  • Review and debate Policy and Procedure Documentation progress (Report by subcommittee)
  • Consider emergency or important issues/projects that are worthy of discussion prior to annual project update

▪  Specific Meetings

  • In February subsequent to the Executive Staff annual strategic planning session to set / reaffirm 3 year strategic objectives
  • In March to set the direction for the upcoming Budget process
  • In April to review the finalized Fiscal year Technology plan and accompanying Capital Expenditure Proposal.