Question 1A well calculated IT budget should help Veterans Affairs (VA) Office in running effectively and providing the necessary services in an effective manner. It promotes accountability and sets up the spending guidelines for the department. This can work best for my organization through the following steps; first is to write the budget down. This will allow for easy monitoring of the progress and determining those areas that need more attention. The second step is to decide the parties who should be involved and the times they when they should. Some senior executives play a vital role in this step. However, the employees are also responsible for adhering to budgets and should therefore participate in creating them. Third is to set up an annualized timeline. Understanding the peak cycle of business so as to have a specific time when interested parties can have the time to focus on it. The fourth step is to make a list of particular chores with specific accountability assignments. Doing this will help to get the assignment is completed on a deadline. The last step is to ensure the synchronization of the plan line items and the financial statement. This will help to avoid budget excesses.
Question 2
Veterans Affairs (VA) Office will experience a number of challenges as a result of the implementation of IM in the organization. This will be experienced as the organization attempts to convert ideas into information that can be understood and applied. First will be the challenge of keeping up with the technology. The hard part here will be in determining how to dispense knowledge fast. Keeping data accurate is another challenge that will affect the manner in which information will be kept up to date. The company will also face the challenge of having to provide the right security level for the information. In the process, it will have to face the obstacle of keeping its staff motivated in the hope of developing a learning culture. As for the opportunities, Veterans Affairs (VA) Office will benefit from reduced costs as IM will reduce things such as paper work. It will also benefit from increased profits as well as managed risk.
Question 3
An organization’s technology roadmap outlines its vision as far as information technology is concerned. Thus, VA’s Roadmap highlights how various emerging innovations will have an impact and a role to play in VA operations going forward. There is a target state view of the kind of IT infrastructure VA should have in its environment to guide its IT decision making and planning. It is from the Roadmap that the IT budget is determined. In addition to that, all technology investments and the strategic decisions associated to the transformation and the modernization of the IT capabilities VA has, are all dependent on the roadmap.
VA’s technology vision is to have users access information through any device, anytime they need to, anywhere they are. That means the Veterans, their dependents, the partners and customers of the organization will be in a position to get seamless information and services anytime, anywhere, and on any device. The Vision has the following attributes:
Location freedom
Device freedom
Secure authentication
Temporal freedom – taking care of the time freedom when accessing information.
UI freedom – the device used does not matter.
Data security.
Question 5
IT helps in facilitating and executing the budgeting process by increasing the accuracy and speed rate of the process. As such, Information Technology helps to put together Information Management and create software that can make this process easy and fast. This allows for the right people to participate in the process by playing their roles effectively. At the same time, the executive management of the organization as well as other involved parties such as auditors are able to easily study the budgets when needed. The company is also able to keep records of the budget for accounting purposes such as comparing and making any necessary adjustments.
- McKeen, J. D., & Smith, H. (2012). IT strategy: Issues and practices (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
