CA Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Case Studies
CA Dept. of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) Case Studies
CDCR is California’s largest state agency with a yearly budget of approximately $12B, making it the largest agency in the U.S., housing over 165,000 prisoners in 33 major prison facilities. CDCR’s business requirements are safety for citizens and reduction of recidivism.
The agency’s vision is to end the causes and tragic effects of crime, violence, and victimization in our communities through a collaborative effort that provides intervention to at-risk populations and quality services from the time of arrest that will assist their clients in achieving successful reintegration into society.
Enterprise Architecture Maturity Initiative
CDCR has 48 mission-critical applications, hundreds of non-mission-critical applications, thousands of reports, and at least 12 major IT projects in-flight per year. The State Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) has mandated that all reportable projects be approved in advance by the OCIO through an EA program. In response, CDCR has therefore needed to initiate, instantiate, and mature an EA program.
Business effectiveness and efficiency are required for public and private sector organizations. These organizations have established inertia in how they deliver mission services, making change difficult. In most cases, technology investments grow by solving many small problems, with little potential for efficiency related to business needs. Small business changes occur daily, making strategic direction difficult, as each change is not brought into alignment with the enterprise Vision and Strategy. Pressure for increased streamlining of processes is therefore often out of line with the enterprise direction. Problems continue to outnumber the available resources to resolve them, disrupting plans. Business and technology are not in harmony, so architecture must be the element to pull them together.
Implementing and sustaining an Enterprise Architecture (EA) program brings the right information to leaders and managers to help them make informed decisions for the projects or programs that can effectively achieve the required business results. If seen only as an IT initiative, EA may fall significantly short in understanding how competitive the business needs to be, and this can be a critical point of failure. EA programs also fail as compliance organizations. While EA may be served well through forms of compliance, it is the EA services that will help all parties understand the value and benefit of doing things differently. This is the optimal approach to EA; it is the only way to ensure the appropriate investments are made in the right sequence to bring about optimal results.
Enterprise Architecture as a solution contributes to organizational performance effectiveness. Productivity is improved in alignment with business objectives. Sub-optimization within silos is gradually reduced, gaining cross-functional benefits. Business services are no longer held hostage to low-level investment decisions. Resource effectiveness is improved through prioritization, and resource waste is reduced through initiative synergy. Interoperability improvements drive reductions in formerly high support operations cost. Business outcomes begin to lead peer organizations. Results for investment gradually improve the enterprise image and credibility with customers. Enterprise potential is realized more frequently and service-to-cost ratios are lowered. In the final analysis, it is the business customer’s expectations that drive recognition for how architecture has improved business performance.
Project Management Consulting Services
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) operates and manages youth facilities for secure custody of youthful offenders. DJJ administers the services and programs for carrying out its statutory mission—providing the training, treatment, and rehabilitative services designed to return youth to society better equipped to be successful in their communities.
The challenge for DJJ was to respond to the Farrell case lawsuit, which required it to provide remedial plans in all areas of operational and programmatic deficiencies, and to reform California’s juvenile system to a rehabilitative model.
This long-term strategic effort of reinventing California’s juvenile correction system encompasses: creating the capacity for change, reducing violence and fear, identifying a treatment/rehabilitative model, laying the groundwork for treatment reform, converting facilities to a rehabilitative model, reforming the system for females, and other issues. DJJ was challenged to effectively manage these complex organizational and procedural changes without disrupting current operations.
DJJ requested Delegata’s help in building the management expertise needed to implement the solutions mandated by the Farrell case. Delegata’s expert project management team worked with DJJ management and other stakeholders to improve DJJ’s ability to monitor and control projects, and to strengthen its project management capabilities using materials from multiple solutions. Delegata provided direct assistance and guidance, including development of project management best practices and models that DJJ can use to manage the Farrell case effort as well as other projects. Some of the solution elements provided by Delegata included:
Transform the Enterprise Solution
– Development of an Organizational Capability Life Cycle (OCLC)
- Guidance on the use of the OCLC
- Implementation of a new leadership model
- Creation of work portfolios within the overall effort, and alignment of requirements with each of these portfolios
– Establishment of an architectural framework which supported not only the Farrell effort, but can be used as a basis for projects in the future
Plan and Execute Change Through Projects Solution
- Creation of various project management and other critical project templates
– Project management and organizational change management guidance, along with written guidelines and best practices
While initially a bit awkward and mechanical, the decision matrix helped leaders and managers to recognize the decisions they should be making—and how to make those decisions—through a process that ensured the necessary information was available to them. For complete transparency, all decisions were published; enabling others to review whether the authority was appropriate at the time the decision was made, based on perceptions of its impact. This “learning” approach to better distributed decision-making helped to build a discipline with sufficient oversight and management to ensure a safe implementation for change, within a highly political environment. This governance structure methodology became a standard for much of the business architecture within CDCR.