Introduction

Lifeline also provides national services and campaigns that promote emotional wellbeing, encourage help seeking, and address suicide prevention and awareness. Lifeline is a not-for-profit organisation and relies on community support. The Information Technology Strategic Plan recognises the critical role of IT services in supporting Lifeline’s business objectives and the provision of services to all stakeholders.

A primary goal of this plan was to develop an IT environment that will deliver quality and efficient services, in a risk controlled manner using recognised governance and security frameworks. The Information Technology Strategic Plan is intended to chart a course for IT over the next three years and will be modified as needed to reflect environmental changes.

The Challenge

To define an environment that will be supported by a ‘Service Delivery’ framework aligned to ITIL best practice principles and delivered by a robust and well managed project management methodology. The Lifeline IT Technology Strategy Plan is intended to be a forward looking proactive plan of action to achieve stated outcomes that will enable the Lifeline IT department to deliver services in an effective and efficient manner. The document must be written in a straightforward and easy-to-understand manner with the intention that all Lifeline personnel can comprehend the objectives and intentions of the Information Technology strategy.

The Solution

In formulating the IT Strategy, there was significant engagement with:

• External consultancy (Mitec) providing maturity assessments and feedback, identifying areas of effective improvements in governance and technology
• Information Strategy working groups
• Feedback received from appropriate stakeholders with Lifeline
• Account of external influences or initiatives from industry standards and methodologies

Input was considered from a variety of important areas such as;

• Operational Requirements
• External Requirements
• Customer Requirements
• Regulatory Requirements
• Lifeline’s IT Principles
• The Lifeline IT Governance Domains
• Lifeline’s Operational Architecture

The Operational Architecture provided a flowchart of the relationships that enabled the Lifeline IT department to realise the vision of evaluating, implementing and managing an IT infrastructure that will deliver desired benefits for the Lifeline business and its customers.

“To create a feature rich, integrated, supportable and secure technological environment that provides Lifeline employees with access to the Information Technology resources that support and enhance their activities”.

The operational environment was defined to follow a Service Lifecycle approach as described in the ITIL V3 methodology. This framework provides guidance on how services are delivered to provide maximum VALUE to customers by ensuring;

• Services are agreed and defined with customer input
• An appropriate level of strategy is applied to services
• Services are designed with due consideration to operational needs
• Services will be transitioned into the operation environment with minimal risk
• A robust and efficient operational environment is developed and managed
• A continual service improvement approach is installed to review and assess services and processes