Name : Tria Surya Puspita

Class : YP59A
ID : 29118106

Strategic Decision Making and Negotiation – Individual Assignment.

CASE: “The City of Pittsburgh goes to the cloud: a case study of cloud solution strategic selection and
deployment”

Q.1 Why was it important to asses the strategic position of CIS in relation to the City strategy prior to
proposing a solution for the provision of email services for the City?

Answer:
The City’s Information System (CIS) department can’t operate alone and for this reason it was
important to align with the CIS modernization strategy with that of the City of Pittsburgh itself. As we
know, CIS responsible for the planning, acquisition, installation, and support of the City proprietary
and open computing environments. The problem CIS is facing is the increasing demand of City
employees for mail services in terms of quantity, mailbox size, cost and support to the system. CIS
must choose between increasing its IT personnel or outsourcing its email services from cloud service
provider. To understand the City of Pittsburgh’s strategic position, it’s important to understand the
nature of the City administration and technology department.

Q.2 Why is it important to involve stakeholders (internal and external) in the decision-making process
as early as possible?

Answer:
It is important because if we don’t involve stakeholders in the decision-making process then the
decision would be biased. The critical success factor for cloud services would be a complete buy-in
from the employees at the CIS and City level. The importance of stakeholder buy-in has been recognize
as important in public administration and that the City had direct experience with what could happen.
The most critical activity that would require stakeholder (internal and external) participation would
be the selection of the proper cloud service provider for the City. Particular attention to the
participation of CIS stakeholders in the Cloud decision-making process was needed.

Q.3 Why was so much time devoted to the development of sound decision-making process? Is this
equally important in both the private and public sectors? What are the differences between public
and private administration and the deployment of IT innovations?

Answer:
Because each committee member shared his or her own perspective on the project, accommodating
each committee member interest was difficult. This process of decision making turned out to be more
time consuming and laborious.
In decision-making process both the private and public sectors equally important to be considered.
The differentiation between a private cloud is owned and operated by the company which then shares
services with different department in the organization and a public cloud, the customer shares the
cloud services with other customers. Then, development of IT innovation is the strategy for both
private and public innovation.
Q.4 The decision-makers quickly assessed, in the case and based on previous experiences, the
readiness of email services to be migrated to the cloud. Can you think of other IT services that
could be easily migrated to the cloud? Why?

Answer:
As we know, The City of Pittsburgh functions was a strong mayor council form of government
and is made up of three governing bodies: the Mayor’s office, City Controller, and City Council.
With the existence of the cloud, we can make things more open, for example about
government financial data/history that can be accessed by everyone through cloud or to
make it easier for communities to get access to public services.

Q.5 The case ends with the Mayor of City of Pittsburgh announcing the completion of the
project on time and on budget. What factor(s) contributed to making this cloud migration
project a success? What constitutes IT success in the end?

Answer:
 The City of Pittsburgh had experience with previous project and understood that an
element critical to the success of a project was setting up a proper decision-making
team. In terms of team composition, it was decided that group member would be
selected not in terms of position but rather expertise.
 Internal and external analysis really help to building strategy for decision-making
process.
 Existence of Stakeholder in decision-making process.
 Ensuring all committee members pay attention to the opinions/concern that are
available.
 Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology help this project to provide vendor
transparently.