ADS outlines shift to service-based IT model to boost equity and predictability

Denise Riley Hughes, secretary for the Agency of Digital Services, told the Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee that ADS is moving from a transactional approach to a service-based model intended to deliver digital equity, clearer financial controls and predictable IT services across state government. "When I joined the agency just 1 month shy of 3 years ago, we were looking at what the intention of creating centralization in IT is," she said.

Riley Hughes said ADS has organized services into core enterprise services and field services and is introducing a competency-based model to concentrate skills and enable repeatable successes across departments. She said the new model accounts for uneven distribution of field resources in the past — "less than 50% of the departments had dedicated field resources" — and that shared field capacity will reduce duplication and allow the state to scale services up or down more predictably. The secretary said the model includes metrics per service to show capacity, quality and where resources should shift.