How pressure on municipal IT feeds itself

How pressure on municipal IT feeds itself

Municipalities have invested heavily in digitalisation over the past years. New applications have been introduced, processes have been automated and an increasing amount of service delivery now operates digitally. Yet many IT departments do not feel that their workload is decreasing; in fact, for many IT managers, the opposite appears to be true.

Digitalisation also means more management

Every new application brings new responsibilities with it.

-Updates.
-Security patches.
-Authorization management.
-Vendor coordination.
-Integrations.
-Monitoring.

Where once a single system was managed, a modern application landscape now demands continuous attention from multiple disciplines. Digitalisation reduces manual work in processes, but simultaneously increases the management burden of the digital environment.

Requests continue to rise

Organisational expectations are changing. Departments want to respond faster to new legislation. Managers request more control information. Users expect user-friendly digital processes. New AI applications are also being introduced.

Every development leads to new requests and change requests. As a result, IT's work is gradually shifting from maintenance to continuously supporting change.

Incidents crowd out improvement work

Many IT departments recognise this situation. The agenda is full of improvement initiatives, but as soon as a disruption occurs or an urgent change is required, attention shifts.

Projects are postponed. Innovation waits. Improvements remain unaddressed.

The result is that the organisation is primarily focused on solving today's challenges, while structural improvements gradually fade into the background.

The labour market increases the pressure

There's a second development: experienced IT professionals are scarce.

Municipalities compete with commercial organisations for the same specialists. As a result, dependence on existing staff increases.

Knowledge concentrates in a small number of people. When someone leaves or departs, pressure on the team increases further.

Greater complexity demands greater coordination

A large part of the work is no longer technical.

Time is increasingly spent on coordination:
With vendors
With functional operations
With process owners
With information security
With other departments.

The more complex the application landscape becomes, the more time is required to carefully coordinate changes.

Work pressure is about more than capacity

When workload increases, people often look at available capacity, but capacity is not always the cause.

The question is also how much time is lost on:

• identifying dependencies;
• manual controls;
• duplicate work;
• unforeseen impacts of changes;
• coordination between different parties.

Exactly these hidden activities take an ever-increasing share of available time without being noticed.

The question is not whether IT is under pressure

Almost every municipal IT department has a full schedule.

The more important question is:

Where does available capacity actually go?

How much time is spent on innovation and how much time is consumed by maintenance, coordination, incidents and resolving unexpected problems?

The answer to that question often says more about the maturity of the organisation than the number of employees on the team.

More digitalisation also requires greater manageability

Municipalities will continue to digitalise in the coming years.

That means:

More processes.
More systems.
More data.
More dependencies.

That is why it is increasingly important not only to look at capacity, but also at the manageability of the entire digital landscape.

Because the more predictable changes are and the more insight there is into processes and dependencies, the more room there is to look ahead instead of constantly reacting to current events.

Does your organisation recognise this development?

Many municipalities experience that IT workload continues to increase, despite years of digitalisation. The cause is often not just a shortage of capacity, but also the growing complexity of processes, systems and interdependencies.

Do you want to know where the biggest bottlenecks arise within your organisation and why IT spends increasing amounts of time on maintenance, coordination and incidents?

Then fill in the contact form below. One of our advisors will get in touch with you.

Contact us for more information or the accompanying document.