Assessment Strategic Decision Making and Negotiation

The City of Pittsburgh goes to the cloud: a case study of cloud solution
strategic selection and deployment

Prima Puspa Imansari / 29118109

Young Professional 59 C

1. Why was it important to assess the strategic position of CIS in relation to the City strategy
prior to proposing a solution for the provision of email services for the City?
CIS is responsible for the planning, acquisition, installation, and support of the City’s
proprietary and open computing environments. This includes support of personal and
mobile computers and the development of specialized software programs for its Public
Safety and Finance departments and for other departmental initiatives. CIS is divided into
five distinct divisions: public safety, client technology, open systems, operations, and
systems development. Each of these divisions has its own mission and responsibilities and
employs a group of technology professionals with varied work experiences and
backgrounds.

2. Why is it important to involve stakeholders (internal and external) in the decision-making

process as early as possible?
Stakeholders may have different interests, and engagement should be adjusted to
contexts which create differing needs, programme phases or formal requirements, as well
as to national or local processes and cultures. When considering which stakeholders to
engage, at a minimum the planner should identify institutions, groups or individual groups
towards whom the organisation has legal, financial or operational responsibilities;
institutions, groups or individuals who are affected by the organisation’s operations; and,
finally, institutions, groups or individuals who are likely to influence the organisation’s
performance.
The distinction between internal and external stakeholders is important. Stakeholder
involvement approaches should not be viewed as convenient tools for public relations,
image building or winning acceptance for a decision taken behind closed doors.
Stakeholders brought into any decision or project development from the get-go are able to
help provide ideas and help create potential solutions. Often, stakeholders come from
varying backgrounds, and so they look at issues from differing perspectives. This enables
opposing viewpoints to get expressed and discussed.

3. Why was so much time devoted to the development of a sound decision-making process?
Is this equally important in both the private and public sectors? What are the differences
between public and private administration and the deployment of IT innovations?
 Some decisions can involve several complex and interrelated factors, such as
uncertainty or lack of information; high risks; multiple stakeholders; and unexpected
consequences and consequently require an orderly, comprehensive and rational process to
identify the best decision to make. Its causing need more time to development a sound
decision-making process.
Yes, this is equally important in both the private and public sectors, because a
systematic decision-making process assists in proceeding through the critical steps that
should lead to a sound decision. With an organized approach, in fact it is less likely to miss
important factors on one hand and more likely to adopt a good decision.
Public administration is orderly to managing the resources, to achieve the purposes
established by the government. Private administration is the operation, management and
organization of the affairs of the business enterprise. Private sector managers are more
supportive of analysis-based decisions and public sector managers are more supportive of
bargaining-based decisions. It would seem that the public sector is more problem-based,
while the private sector is more opportunity based. The deployment of IT innovations
affect of decision making between public and privat administration. There are few factors
create a pull of innovation, such as user needs and preferences, lobbyism and technology
interdependencies.

4. The decision-makers quickly assessed, in this case and based on previous experiences, the
readiness of email services to be migrated to the cloud. Can you think of other IT services
that could be easily migrated to the cloud? Why?
All of data and application platform could be easily migrated to the cloud, because
once you understand the cloud types and their various pros and cons, your next challenge
is to select which applications to migrate, and to which cloud model to be used. Because
cloud computing is good for business or government, the benefit of using cloud computing
is flexibility (users can scale services to fit their needs, customize applications and access
cloud services from anywhere with an internet connection), efficiency (enterprise users
can get applications to market quickly, without worrying about underlying infrastructure
costs or maintenance) and strategic value (cloud services give enterprises a competitive
advantage by providing the most innovative technology available).

5. The case ends with the Mayor of the City of Pittsburgh announcing the completion of the
project on time and on budget. What factor(s) contributed to making this cloud migration
project a success? What constitutes IT success in the end?
Factor that contributed to making this cloud migration project was setting up a proper
decision-making team. In terms of team composition, it was decided that group members
would be selected not in terms of position, but rather expertise. For example, from the
technical group, all the experienced experts, regardless of position or longevity, were
invited to join the decision-making team. Special attention would be given to include also
key personnel who would be responsible for implementing the solution once a decision
was reached. Managers would be also cautioned about playing down hierarchies and the
need to have and accept dissent among the committee members. Given the need to
optimize the time dedicated to discussions, a structured approach toward team
communications was adopted. For this purpose, it was decided that a facilitator with
experience in leading decision-making groups would be appointed. The facilitator would
instruct the committee members to indicate what they had liked or not liked about the
specific proposal on the table, and once each member had done so, a second chance would
be given to add a comment. After this, a secret vote (using paper questionnaires) would be
used to assess the vendor proposal. This ensured the different judgments and decisions
would move along directly and within the allocated time. Finally, with respect to the
decision process control, it was decided that the effort would be led by the City CIO (as
the senior officer involved in the decision) and the decision making facilitator, and the
follow-up process (e.g. producing minutes, collecting questionnaires) would be done by a
project manager. These three people would constitute the leaders of the cloud-computing
decision-making effort at the City. It was also established that an AHP decision-making
facilitator would participate in the actual evaluation of vendors, but would not vote on the
selection so that his role could be viewed as objective and impartial.