CASE STUDY

VALUE-BASED OPTIMIZATION OF IT INVESTMENTS AT BC GOVERNMENT

The Office of the Chief Information Officer

(OCIO) leads strategy, policy, and standards for

telecommunications, information technology, and

IT security for the Province of British Columbia. The

OCIO manages the Information Management /

Information Technology (IM/IT) capital investment

portfolio for 24 ministries and offices across the

province of British Columbia.

In December 2012, Treasury Board mandated a

deputy ministers’ committee with responsibility

for all of government’s IM/IT capital investments,

including:

• prioritizing government’s IM/IT investments from a total cost of ownership perspective, and;

• maximizing the lifecycle value government

derives from its IM/IT investments.

This led to the creation of the IM/IT Capital

Investment Branch, which acts centrally to provide

portfolio management in the project selection

process of minor capital IT projects.

Risk-Based Planning & Investment Optimization The BC Government invests approximately $100 million per year in capital on IT to bring the highest quality services to British Columbians. They needed a solution to help them plan, manage and optimize their IM/IT investments more strategically, across ministries and offices with distinct interests and competing priorities. They were facing two key challenges:

1. Management of existing applications: The IM/IT portfolio consists of more than 1,600 applications, of which approximately 40% are legacy applications. Audits of IM/IT initiatives across government recommended that improvements be made to the management of these applications to help mitigate the risk of failure.

2. Investments in new applications: The processes and tools used to analyze and prioritize IM/IT capital investment proposals were rudimentary and unable to quickly and efficiently carry out the robust analysis required. They needed a comprehensive solution that could help them evaluate investment requests and allocate IT capital spend in a consistent and defensible way across a diverse group of initiatives.

Previously, these two processes were handled independently and the government was seeking a solution to provide a better picture of the whole application lifecycle and maximize portfolio value.www.gov.bc.ca

CASE STUDY: BC Government

In 2016, the BC Government implemented the Copperleaf C55

Asset Investment Planning & Management (AIPM) solution to

enable end-to-end management of investments. All new minor

IM/IT capital requests (up to $20 million) are now valued, optimized

and prioritized in C55 using 46 different value measures. This

comprehensive approach addresses audit concerns presented by

the Auditor General and improves alignment with BC’s Strategic

Plan and the #BCTECH Strategy.

The Copperleaf Value Framework in C55 provides the decision-

making criteria and governance to manage IT asset expenditures

across multiple government ministries and offices, including:

• Value measures that align to the government’s strategic

priorities, and provide the ability to identify broader themes

and benefits from investments (e.g. addressing legacy apps

and moving off mainframe)

• Real-time modeling and dynamic projections, including

optimization of the investment portfolio alternatives given a

constrained budget

• Tools for project prioritization and risk identification

• Help in maintaining a comprehensive and accurate registry

of applications

• Transparent, fact-based demonstration of the need for additional

funding and the benefits derived from projects

Aligning investment decisions with the BC Government Strategic PlanOne of the unique challenges associated with the project was the

fact that C55 would be used across different ministries and offices

with varying interests and competing priorities (i.e. Agriculture,

Education, Energy & Mines, etc.). As a result, trade-off decisions

need to be made considering a broad spectrum of value—from

hard financial benefits to societal and environmental benefits.

They need to compare for example, a proposal for an investment

in a brand new IT solution in health care vs. an investment to

address a legacy application in justice vs. an environmental

monitoring application replacement, etc.

The Copperleaf Value Framework was configured to provide a

basis for how all of these diverse investments would be evaluated

and prioritized in C55. Copperleaf led structured workshops with

key stakeholders across the government to ensure that all of the

different value measures that needed to be represented in the value

framework were accounted for, and come to agreement on how to

value risk and benefits in a way that aligns with the BC Government’s

Strategic Plan. The final Value Framework is shown in Figure 1.

BC GOVERNMENT

$100 MillionIM/IT ANNUAL CAPITAL SPEND

27,000EMPLOYEES

1,600

24

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT/ INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

PORTFOLIO

MINISTRIES & OFFICES

APPLICATIONS

> Figure 1: All new IM/IT requests for up to $20 million in capital are evaluated, optimized and prioritized in C55 using 46 different value measures.

Investment optimization & data-driven decisions One of the government’s key objectives was to be able to maximize

return on a constrained budget. C55’s multi-constraint optimization

technology can evaluate any number of dissimilar projects against

a common framework to identify the highest-value combination of

investments that respects all constraints.

C55 also provides the ability to create any number of “what-if”

scenarios (i.e. what-if we increase the budget by 10%?) to compare

and contrast different levels of funding to come to agreement on the

best overall investment strategy. Unlike other solutions, C55 considers

funding, resource and timing requirements, resulting in a realistic plan

that can be accomplished within a given set of constraints.

Benefits and Improvements RealizedThe C55 system went live in November 2016 and will be used to

manage investments for fiscal year 2018. Concept Cases and Business

Cases are being entered and submitted in C55, making it easier for

employees to collaborate and track their investment requests from

inception through to approval. Both Concept Cases and Business

Cases use relevant value measures to assess hard and soft benefits,

as well as risk mitigation, and to calculate projected investment value.

The BC Government expects this streamlined investment planning

process to reduce cycle times for Business Case development

and shorten time for review and approval. For example, portfolio

modeling exercises that previously took weeks and months to

prepare can now be done on demand during committee meetings.

COPPERLEAF VALUE FRAMEWORK FOR THE BC GOVERNMENT

Benefits and Improvements Realized

Increased value for money: The goal of the project was to optimize the value of the IM/IT minor

capital portfolio by prioritizing spend on investments that deliver

the greatest return given a constrained budget. C55 helps ensure

that value-based decision making is used to align new investment

proposals to government priorities, and optimization within C55

helps to model scenarios with the highest value for money.

Improved application risk management:C55 has replaced the labour-intensive Application Health Check

spreadsheet (160,000 data elements recreated bi-annually) with

a dynamic, user-friendly interface. All asset data is now stored in

C55 allowing the government to see which aging applications

present the greatest risk and need replacement. This provides

greater insight into the impact of investments on asset health

and the spend profile of the entire portfolio and significantly

reduces effort for end users to update.

Capital budget increase approved:C55 provides real-time modeling and creates dynamic projections,

allowing governance committees to evaluate different funding and

investment scenarios. The IM/IT Capital Investment Branch was able

to demonstrate due diligence and provide evidence to support

a request for increased funding by using C55 to demonstrate the

benefits that could be achieved and the risk that would be mitigated.

Enhanced reporting and analytics:C55’s dashboards show the 10-year capital forecast and all of the

investments that have been approved, are pending approval, and are

currently executing. Users can drill down and view this information

by government sector and ministry at the click of a button,

eliminating the manual effort that went into producing reports.

Copperleaf Technologies2920 Virtual Way, Suite 140Vancouver, BC V5M 0C4 Canada www.copperleaf.com

Streamlined processes:C55’s Workflows streamline the process ministries use to submit

minor capital requests to the IM/IT Capital Investment Branch for

review. This eliminates duplication of effort across ministries and

offices, and improves the management and tracking of projects

as they progress through their lifecycles.

Transparent, fact-based decisions:C55 provides better insight into the 1,600 applications that exist

across government. This enables the government to rationalize the

portfolio while increasing opportunities for cross-government sharing

and re-use of pre-existing applications to solve new problems.

“ With Copperleaf’s C55 solution, a product made right here in B.C., we have established a more rigorous process to ensure we’re aligning our spending decisions with the initiatives that are most critical to citizens and businesses in BC.” — Amrik Virk, Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services

BC Government

CASE STUDY: BC Government

> Amrik Virk, Minister of Technology, Innovation and Citizens’ Services, with Copperleaf CEO Judi Hess. C55 supports decision making on approximately $430 million in IT funding requests across ministries and improves alignment with the #BCTECH Strategy.