Business information and systems plan.

Abstract

The Texas Department of Transportation currently faces the challenges of a drastically changing business environment. These challenges include: increased customer expectations, changing demographics, environmental pressures, global competition, increased accountability, a less-experienced workforce and trying to do more with less. Additional pressure has been exerted on the department from federal mandates, state legislation and the general public. In addition, employees demand more timely and accurate information and decision support tools to perform their duties. To keep up with these demands, TxDOT has taken a proactive role to be accountable for the quality of the products and services the department provides. In an attempt to meet these change imperatives, the executive management directive is to work smarter (i.e., retool/reengineer many of the business processes). The culmination of these change imperatives are expected to be revolutionary in nature versus the historical evolutionary change. Retooling TxDOT is a program that has been established to assist the department in "creating tomorrow today." There are three stages of Retooling TxDOT: Business Information and Systems Planning, business process retooling, and the implementation of business improvement projects. The Business Information and Systems Plan (BISP) defines guidelines to assure that the investments made by the department in both retooling its business processes and establishing its information systems environment are: • consistent with the department's business mission, vision, goals and objectives; • justified by the business benefits provided; and • providing the technology infrastructure necessary to proactively meet future business challenges and opportunities. The Management Team and various personnel participated in a number of workshops to identify the department's mission, vision, goals and objectives. This information was utilized by employees from districts, divisions, and special offices to develop the TxDOT business model. The business model provides a representation of the actions performed by the department in the course of conducting business.