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Independent Verification & Validation | IT Risk Management | Government Agencies

City Government IV&V

As part of an IV&V engagement, ATIBA managed a team of risk management specialists responsible for conducting some very challenging IT risk assessments for government agencies in a large, metropolitan city. The goal of the project was to ensure that once deployed, mission-critical business systems used by the agencies would continue to operate as expected after major code changes were made to support changing business requirements and new technology infrastructures.

Adding to the challenge, many of the systems assessed were critical to the on-going health and safety of citizens and agency personnel.

City Agencies Assessed by the ATIBA Team

Agencies that fell under the purview of the ATIBA team included the Fire Department, Department of Correction, Department of Probation, Department of Consumer Affairs, Taxi & Limousine Commission, Department of Environmental Protection, Department of Labor Relations, Cultural Affairs, and the Office of the Mayor.

Project Scope and Activities

The assessment teams involved in this agency-wide initiative conducted dozens of surveys to gather pertinent data, interviewed hundreds of Agency personnel, and validated numerous processes and procedures. They collaborated with Agency personnel to prioritize systems to be reviewed based on severity of potential risk should the system fail and worked with senior Agency leaders with whom they could escalate issues and communicate road-blocks so that critical timelines could be achieved.

The teams reviewed hundreds of pages of IT strategy documents and reviewed test plans and test results; they met with Agency IT teams to confirm testing procedures, and to validate the adequacy of test cases and test scenarios to ensure comprehensive end-to-end testing was successfully completed.

The project managers met regularly with the Deputy Mayor to communicate progress, discuss any roadblocks encountered, and relay other information pertinent to the assessments.

Risk Management

Upon completion of the analysis, the teams developed comprehensive risk assessment reports which were delivered to Agency Commissioners. The reports described the scope of the assessment, actions taken to assess each of the systems reviewed, and documented the interviews performed with Agency personnel. They identified findings and recommendations, risks and issues, and mitigation strategies.

Each system assessed was assigned an overall risk factor that clearly defined the level of risk to the City should the system fail.

Once the Mayor’s staff determined the risk level was acceptable, the city-wide system conversion was scheduled. The IV&V teams defined and coordinated all activities that took place over the conversion weekend; they developed conversion plans and schedules, identified resources, communication protocols and escalation paths.

Summary

The results of the risk assessments and mitigation steps taken by the Agencies based on the recommendations we made played a huge role in the overall success of the city-wide IT conversion. Risk assessment benefits included an increase to Agency preparedness and conversion outcomes and ultimately the safety of the citizens of the City.

Risk assessment activities performed by the team included:

  • Reviewed agency strategic plans, test plans, test strategies, test scripts, test results, problem logs, change management procedures, and interviewed agency commissioners and MIS staff.
  • Assessed and measured compliance against City processes, federal guidelines and industry standards.
  • Assessed agency readiness, identified risk exposure and recommended risk mitigation strategies.
  • Worked with agencies to define and rollout processes and procedures to support mitigation of the risks or implement and retest code revisions to eliminate negative findings.
  • Produced assessment reports that defined scope of each agency assessment, artifacts and systems reviewed, interviews conducted, findings, risks identified, and suggested mitigation strategies.
  • Developed and designed conversion management ‘playbooks’ which were the key vehicles used for the communication and tracking of agency progress throughout the agency-wide conversion weekend; the playbooks were used by all city agencies and the Emergency Operations Center (EOC). Participated in command center activities.

Industry: Government
Category: IV&V, Risk Management

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