Marilyn Mcmillan Is the Associate Provost and Chief Information Technology Officer of New

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New York City Technology Forum

A Government Technology Executive Leadership Forum

October 21-22, 2004
New York Marriott Brooklyn
Brooklyn, NY

Considerations in Selecting and Protecting Your IT Investment

Oct 21, 2004 . 3:15 pm - 4:30 pm

In the current fiscal environment, organizations need to implement a governance structure to select the right IT investments based on a prioritization of what solutions will support the most important enterprise-wide business challenges. Organizations also need to make sure that they have a process in place to ensure the success of that investment. Come discuss a case study of how this process was developed at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and why other governmental and educational organizations are joining a consortium to collaborate on factors in designing and establishing an IT governance structure, portfolio management process and project management discipline. Bring your own lessons learned and questions.

Moderator:
Avi Duvdevani, Chief Information Officer/Deputy General Manager, New York City Housing Authority
Lead Speaker:
Helene Heller, Senior Director, Project & Information Management, Office of the CIO, New York City Housing Authority
Panel:
Marilyn McMillan, Associate Provost and Chief Information Technology Officer, New York University
Leonard Boscia, Manager, Program Management Office, NYPD
Faisal Hanafi, Executive Advisor, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group

Avi’s introduction comments:

My name is Avi Duvdevani, I am the CIO and Deputy General Manager for Information Technology at the New York City Housing Authority, also known as NYCHA.

I would like to thank you all for choosing our session on Considerations in Selecting and Protecting Your IT Investment. We have lots of terrific content to share with you in a very short amount of time so I want to get started without delay. Our format for this session will consist of a formal presentation on NYCHA’s IT Governance and PMO process, followed by an expert panel discussion on the topic. I encourage you to think throughout the session about your own lessons learned and challenges in IT project and portfolio management and to share some of those with all of us at the end of the formal presentation.

Please allow me to share my views (briefly) on the importance of IT governance and PMO and why I worked hard to implement it at the New York City Housing Authority. Initially, the project you will be hearing about commenced with a need, identified by me, as the authority's CIO, to implement IT governance and project management discipline at NYCHA. This was based in part, on having developed a clear understanding of the value of adopting such a management discipline proven during my tenure as First Deputy Commissioner and Acting Commissioner at DoITT. During my first year as NYCHA’s CIO, I focused on socializing the idea of creating the position of Enterprise IT PMO and proving the value of the concept of a project management lifecycle and discipline which would include IT governance, the identification of the Authority’s Enterprise Information Technology initiatives in support of key business priorities, and business case justification and measurement. I was ultimately successful in convincing our Board members, the General Manager and all Executive Staff to support the concept and understand what value it could bring to their respective important roles within the organization. In doing so, an environment was created that enabled the development of the IT governance and project management discipline you will be hearing about today.

·  Lead Speaker: Helene Heller is senior director of the Project and Information Management Office at the NYC Housing Authority. She is responsible for designing and directing the enterprise-wide project management lifecycle and discipline. Additionally, Ms. Heller imports/exports best practices, particularly in the area of cross-boundary integration, and provides oversight for NYCHA’s Information Management Department (IMD). IMD is responsible for NYCHA’s eForms initiative (one of this year’s winners of a Digital Government Achievement Award, which will be honored this evening as part of the Best of the Web Awards dinner and banquet), knowledge management, vital records retention, and a best-in-class micrographics function. Prior to returning to city government, Ms. Heller spent three years as an Internet business strategist in Cisco System’s Northeast U.S. Area. As a member of the Internet Business Solutions Group public sector team, she was focused on accelerating state and local government, K-12, and higher education institutions’ success using Internet solutions to deliver services to a diverse set of customers. Ms. Heller served 16 years in local government, solving operational problems and implementing substantive change in service delivery, business practices and IT governance. Her last position with the city of New York, was as executive director of the NYC Office of New Media. This is an office which several of us had worked hard to create back in 1996 to introduce the Web as an effective business channel to bring government services to its customers. She is a graduate of Purchase College and is a member of the Boards of the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council and the Battery Park City Community Emergency Response Team.

Panelists:

1.  Marilyn McMillan is the Associate Provost and Chief Information Technology Officer of New York University and leads the delivery and evolution of University-wide services, infrastructure, policies, and plans for information technology and related activities. She has served as NYU’s first Chief Information Technology Officer since the role was created in 1998. Before NYU, she held numerous IT Leadership roles at MIT and subsequently at Stanford, with earlier IT experience in government and private industry. She is a graduate of Douglass College at Rutgers University in political science, with graduate work at Virginia Tech. and Boston University. She is currently a doctoral candidate at U. Penn.

2.  Leonard Boscia is Manager, Program Management Office at NYPD. His role at the NYPD is to implement the Strategic Plan outlined by Deputy Commissioner, V. James Onalfo, to whom he reports. The plan includes an almost-total refresh of existing infrastructure, hardware platforms and software tools. Leonard is currently focusing on building a Program Management Office, providing enterprise-wide messaging, as well as defining and implementing a Security Policy. Prior to the NYPD, Mr. Boscia held various Sales/Sales Management/Program Management positions at a large Systems Integrator, and Internet Software companies. He is a graduate of Florida State University.”

3.  Faisal A. Hanafi works with Cisco Systems’ Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG). As an executive advisor in IBSG’s Public Sector, State and Local Government Practice, Mr. Hanafi works with United States State and local government senior executives to assist them in defining their business strategies in leveraging Internet business solutions and business process management to deliver value-added services to constituents. Mr. Hanafi draws on years of experience as a senior member of a national broadband e-business consulting firm and as a senior consultant at a global management consulting firm. Before Cisco he held national solutions lead positions at Concero and Accenture. He currently sits on the Texas eCommerce Association Executive Advisory Board and holds a bachelor of engineering – computer engineering degree from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.