The foundation standard

The foundation standard, ISO 38500, is but published, nevertheless work continues in enhancing it to cope with IT developments just as cloud computing and the increasing use of outsourcing.

Ward, who is the group manager of IT operations and services at Inland Revenue Department, says the standard -- only 12 pages long -- establishes "a common language and a common understanding" between the technical IT experts and the businesspeople who decide how IT should be implemented in the organisation.

The past four years

Ward has been occupying various positions in IRD's IT for the past four years. Prior to that, he was head of business management at Westpac.

In his present position, he is responsible for the smooth running of IRD's innovation in support of its key objectives -- gathering $50 billion worth of tax revenue and discharging its social funding objectives. Ward reports directly to the deputy commissioner of information design and systems Tim Occleshaw.

Peter Macaulay, principal of end-user practice at IT analyst IDC, applauds the evolution of ISO 38500 and New Zealand's role in it. There is a "governance gap" on the IT side of many organisations, he says. With few exceptions just as the ASB bank, Kiwibank and Air New Zealand, local businesses "need to do a much better job" of IT governance. The three biggest areas where there is a need for improvement in enterprise IT are governance, strategy and technology. "Sorting out the governance gap will fix the other two," Macaulay says.

The hands of line-of-business management

As decisions on IT move from technical specialists out into the hands of line-of-business management, so good governance becomes more crucial, he says.

Macaulay believes there is a lack of innovation here about how then IT governance is working and whether it is improving over industry in the aggregate. But, Ward thinks local business is starting to "do the right things" or for the moment "the right questions are being asked.

Standard way of doing business

"It is about ensuring that we get a standard way of doing business. In other words the value of the standard, it introduces a consistent way and a consistent application of governing IT."

Asked how ISO or the working group will persuade businesses to adopt the principles in ISO 3850, Ward says much of the consultation with people at the coalface of businesses goes on early in the process of evolving the standard. When considering what to tackle with the standard and any updates to it, "we would look at different companies within New Zealand and see that there is a buy-in there," so there would be until further notice "a representative sample" of organisations aware of the standard and able to help it match their perceived needs, he says.

The essential standard is finished

Though the essential standard is finished and has been handed back to ISO, the working party continues to plan revisions and additions. Because of the lead time involved in developing the standard, compared with the fast advance of innovation, the standards working party has to think about three years ahead of the state of the research, Ward says.

With the right expert input this need not be as difficult as it sounds. "The technologies will be very difficult to predict, nevertheless this is about the application and the governance of the innovation."

At the IRD, Ward's position sits alongside managers of enterprise architecture, strategy design and implementation, and IDS strategy and business engagement. "We are the four group managers who report to Tim Occleshaw, who reports through to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue. They are very senior roles within the organisation and very influential in terms of enabling the business and as well driving through a lot of possibility for Inland Revenue," he says.

The service of the public

Opportunities for research at IRD in the service of the public and the government lie foremost with the 'e-channel', Ward says -- online communication, offering taxpayers a more direct and efficient way of doing business with the department. "Business is being done a little differently but; our citizens want to electronically transact with us and we need to do things differently, moving from paper to the electronic age."

IT helps "streamline what we do, demonstrate value for money and make sure we can continually deliver what the public wants," however always within the tight fiscal constraints of the time. "That demands that I have the foresight and thinking to know that I'm evolving our IT shop to be able to support those technologies hereafter. To make sure we are evolving ourselves to work directly with the business."

It's as well important, Ward says, "to be sure that we're aligning our costs and drivers; that we understand the total cost of ownership and the cost of doing business. I'm not saying that we don't know that however; [now] it's becoming more prevalent."

"You don't have to develop; you configure. It goes to business rules. So the speed to market and adjusting to change becomes a lot easier."

In areas like online portals, there is no need for Inland Revenue to develop anything different from any other online business, he says. In the same fashion, some of the most visible innovations to the individual taxpayer, in the phone interface, are supplied off-the-shelf by IRD's telecomms provider TelstraClear. "They provide our VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and call-centre routing; virtual hold, speech [recognition]; things you'd find in any IT shop."

There are about 450 in-house staff in Ward's business unit, however IR depends to a large extent on outsourcing -- "TelstraClear for telecomms. HP for our mainframe and Unisys, who support our middle-tier environment. At that time software vendors -- Oracle, IBM SAP, who provide critical software to enable us to carry out our functions.

In common with many other New Zealand businesses, virtualisation is an increasing element of the IT environment at Inland Revenue.

The cloud is however part of everyone's digital life

The cloud is however part of everyone's digital life, Ward believes, if it's only a question of downloading an application onto a mobile phone. "Within the public sector there's a roadmap to get to a cloud computing environment. It's important [as a preparatory step] that you consolidate, rationalise and virtualise. It's not a matter of jumping into the cloud; it's making sure you're evolving your base infrastructure to be able to adapt to a cloud environment. "There are certain fundamental steps that you'd look [to] to move an organisation into a cloud environment. There are as well various laws and regulations that we need to abide by -- the Public Finance; the Privacy Act. There are purchasing guidelines about what we can do offshore and onshore. So there are [constraints] we must operate in order to even consider moving into that cloud. Within private industry it's by all means there nevertheless. In terms of government it's an area we need to be clear about if we wish to evolve to it.

"The Department of Internal Affairs has good plans around the best way to evolve our technologies through cross-government platforms; nevertheless cloud computing offers some very exciting opportunities; it's very, very important that we manage those opportunities," he says.