Your Questions Answered – Governance
At the GIS Managers Summit in July, attendees were able to submit questions for our live panel. While we had some great answers, there were dozens of questions we didn’t have time for, so we’re going to answer them here!
Our panelists will be posting, Q&A-style, over the next several weeks, so check back here regularly!
This week, @DeeptiKochhar answered questions about governance:
Q: Where is the best place for one to start and why for a one-person team?
A: As a team of one it depends on what you are looking to do more – bring efficiency in the work you are doing, or create visibility to get more resources to support you. I am going to assume a little bit of both.
When you are team of one, it is very easy to get overwhelmed and be drowned in your daily operations. Take time from your routine to -
- Review the organizations mission and vision and the work its is doing.
- Review the work you are doing and see what mission areas your work touches.
From this, you can generate ideas on how you could be supporting in these mission areas better, or identify other areas that you could support. Create a Storymap or hub site of what work GIS team (team of one) is supporting and how you could be supporting more efficiently in other program areas (if you feel comfortable with slides that is ok too). Find opportunity to present this to leadership. Many times, leadership is not aware of what all the GIS team is doing to contribute to the larger organization mission. This will have two-fold impact –
- You will get a better understanding of where to focus attention
- It will create visibility for leadership to help create vision for geospatial use in the organization, and that will lay a foundation for developing a strategy and direction for your organization.
Q: Can you give an example of how transparency impacts buy-in, that you referenced in your presentation?
A: Organizations set their business goals and vision, and then the IT strategy to meet those goals and vision. Transparency from the leadership is important, in communicating why the organization is doing what it is doing, and then involving the staff in defining the processes to meet the business goals and vision.
There are two ways to look at buy-in – bottom-up and top-down. Transparency impacts buy-in for both. When the senior leadership is setting the business objective and vision for the organization and communicate it with the organization in a transparent way, it creates ownership and thus buy-in from the staff – and similarly, when the teams are included in setting the processes that help the organizations objectives, there is buy-in for implementation of these processes. Thus, transparency from top-down and bottom-up helps create buy-in so that the team can all work towards the same objectives.
When you have defined the governance objectives your organization needs to meet, creating working groups that help you identify the practices that can be implemented to meet these objectives and taking input from people to define these practices helps create buy-in. Hence, open and transparent approach to define the processes to meet the objectives is important for success, as you are engaging the people who will be implementing these.
Q: How do you ensure that governance can build the trusted system of records with real-time data and near real-time data?
A: When creating your governance, define the objective for reliable data. Create practices both on the IT system side and people and process side to meet these objectives, and define activities that help you meet these objectives and practices. This will require a combination of IT system and data workflow creation, process and people training, to ensure that they are following executing on these workflows.
Q: We talked a lot about lack of engagement of executive sponsors/departments. On the other end of the spectrum, how do we manage over-engagement of these people groups, when their enthusiasm manifests in micro-management of internal GIS-only-processes, etc.?
A: When working with senior leadership or executive sponsors there is never one answer or option, but having an engaged leadership is great. Creating a regular bi-annually or quarterly cadence to provide updates and also get input is a way to ensure they are staying engaged and involved, and setting this expectation will help. Depending on the size of the organization, the frequency of the updates could go up or down. Use these meetings to take input from leadership and address the changing priorities of the organization. If leaders are engaged, this will provide a venue to ensure funding and support for your program.
Q: Can you share with us a template of GIS policies that can be recommended for governance
A: The GIS Policies are not one-size-fits-all. Based on the size and priorities of the organization, these will differ or change. But, the intension is to understand your organizations principles and business strategy, and align your policies and procedures to focus on these key areas:
- Processes
- Organization structure
- Information flows and management
- People, skills and competencies
In order for these policies to be successful, you have to ensure that the culture of the organization is taken into account, what impact it will have on the services, the infrastructure and applications it supports, as well as the organization change.
Q: I have governance for – IT, PMO, Data...
Where should GIS governance reside, and what is the ideal solution to keep governance intact?
A: This is a great question. Organizations will typically have many governances that focus on one area or another. Each of the governances will address and focus on specific areas of the business. The key thing to consider is that GIS governance should align with and expand on each of these areas, to ensure that GIS governance addresses each of these areas. If the governance does not address location strategy for IT, Data and PMO, then these should be expanded to include them. Typically, the GIS Advisory Committee would ensure that these governance objectives are met and executed to meet the Business and IT Objectives and get the return on investment.
Q: What comes first the chicken or the egg – governance or strategy?
A: This is a great question – they go hand in hand, irrespective of what you develop first. Organizations have to take into account that a strategy that is not governed is not successfully met, and a governance without a strategy may not meet business success and the objectives it needs to.
Governance exists to provide value to the organization and the return on investment (ROI).
Strategy should align with your organizations mission and vision, and governance should align with the objectives of your organization, so you can meet the business objectives and strategic goals successfully.