When U.S. transit providers look back at the past four months, it’s possible they might see this crisis as a pivotal moment where transit agencies learned to facilitate remote work. Some agencies may breathe a sigh of relief that they invested in cloud-based information technology (IT) systems to allow personnel to work from home, remain agile and effectively manage the disruption.
Yet few would argue that transit agencies operated seamlessly during the crisis. For some agencies, mobile platforms were not yet in place or ready to handle the increased demand. For others, personnel were not ready to use these platforms.
COVID-19 should provide a pivotal point – a wake-up call – for agencies to think proactively about building IT systems to help support and modernize operations.
Here are five steps transit agencies can take to modernize IT systems and ensure personnel are prepared to operate information technology platforms.
1. Develop an IT strategic roadmap.
Agencies should be equipped with a strategic plan to guide decision making and the management of information technology platforms. This should be a living document that is revised as new technologies emerge and as organizations confront new challenges.
Designing this strategic plan requires a thorough understanding of what an organization needs its IT systems to accomplish. Agencies should take time to evaluate their operations holistically, understand their best business practices, identify functional needs, map their own internal organizational structure, take an inventory of their current projects and then align their IT strategy to support what know to best support efficient, reliable service.
Precise functional needs should drive IT purchases and adoption, not the other way around. Organizations that do not take time to asses needs are often left purchasing multiple IT platforms with identical functionalities, replacing systems frequently or implementing systems and tools with functional gaps.
Agencies, once they have understood their functional needs, should then write down their IT policies with an understanding that they will use these policies to navigate the next crisis they confront.
2. Define an IT delivery model.
COVID-19 forced agencies to immediately turn away from the office locations that long centralized operations and employed cloud-based collaboration systems like Microsoft Teams and Zoom to facilitate interactions that had been held in conference rooms. Additional cloud-based systems allowed operators in the field to connect remotely to agency operations centers. They include vehicle health monitoring systems that use sensors to automatically notify management of required maintenance; or computer-aided dispatching and automated-vehicle locating (CAD/AVL) systems that track the precise location of a vehicle enroute and collect and manage critical data; or voice-over internet protocol (VoIP) call center systems that allow customer service representatives to respond to complaints without leaving their homes.
Now, with personnel slowly returning to their offices, agencies should proactively ensure that these platforms can effectively operate during day-to-day operations.
This will require identifying leaders to monitor IT management within departments and ensuring these continually provide updates on system performance. Silos cannot be permitted.
Agencies should ensure a strong relationship between central IT management personnel and users of the technology. All units within the organization should be engaged in a robust partnership with IT management personnel. No transformation process can be successful if IT personnel are simply responding to taskings without much engagement from users. IT personnel should, to the greatest degree possible, sit within organizational units to help translate products to practice.
Ensuring this level of engagement will require supportive IT policies and an organizational model that supports delivery of the technology.
New technologies will emerge rapidly and agencies should be proactively ensuring that organizations are structurally prepared to leverage new innovations.
3. Ensure that everyone is a technology enabler.
Transit agencies are notoriously behind on technology adoption. Catching up will require training and perhaps new personnel. Agencies should do a top-to-bottom review of their personnel to ensure everyone is capable of using IT platforms they will be required to operate with during an emergency.
IT literacy and competence have now become an urgent concern. In response to the Great Recession, many agencies enacted hiring freezes, some lasting as many as five or six years and stopped cold the inflow of younger, more technology literate personnel. The average age of a transit employee is now 50 years old, well exceeding that of other public services. Without new employees, legacy personnel operated with legacy systems.
Compounding concerns: Many subject matter experts are past retirement age, with little in the way of succession planning. As a result, transit agencies have been years behind in adopting cloud-based systems.
Agencies should invest in training existing personnel and perhaps hire additional personnel to manage IT.
Ensuring that everyone is a technology enabler will require agencies manage significant internal change. Only in successfully navigating the people side of change can an organization match the expected (positive) return on investment in IT.
Begin with an early pilot of an IT platform among personnel known to be capable early adopters, and then migrate efforts to personnel that may need more support. There will no doubt be resisters who search for workarounds to avoid using the new platforms. Place effort to show them the benefits to the new platform and answer any questions they might have.
Success will be determined by three measures: speed in using the new platform, proficiency in operating the platform and percent of personnel who have adopted the new platform in their day-to-day operations.
The third measure of success is likely to be determined by executive leadership. Agency leaders should insist that everyone adopt a new platform. If executives don’t commit themselves and their personnel to adopting a new IT platform, they won’t.
4. Ensure every operational unit is engaged in new IT platforms.
Information technology should multiply the impact of an entire organization, not simply that of your IT personnel.
Organizations installing a new IT system typically use their own information technology office as a proving ground. Once IT departments validate a system, other offices within the organization – scheduling, planning, capital projects, to name a few – are then engaged. It is essential to have active participation across units of an organization throughout the process.
You’re all in this together. It simply can’t be one unit driving other units. The long-range benefits of a new IT platform should be clear enough that leaders within non-IT units champion the new IT platform.
Be mindful of timing considerations as you engage units in an organization. Recognize that it may not always be an ideal time to introduce a new IT platform on business units that are in the throughs of their busiest times of the year (payroll departments during tax season, for example).
To ensure new capabilities are seamlessly extended throughout agencies, think about IT accessibility from the beginning. Identify what operations can be done on a virtual platform and anticipate the challenges you will confront. Determine what operations can be done virtually, how IT can help automate certain operations and ensure IT platforms align with your business strategy of the entire organization.
Be aware of risks that emerge because you are bringing so many folks into the virtual network. Systems designed to support communication amongst an office of 50 may collapse when suddenly confronted by several hundred users or several thousand users.
Finally, have a standard process for evaluating organizational readiness for integrating an IT platform. Before a unit is left with the new IT platform, the system should be tested. Organizations can find systems that have been inadequately tested fail to integrate with other products and cannot safely maintain appropriate user privileges. Avoid this struggle.
5. Set up an actionable plan for revisiting your IT strategic plan.
Information technology and training on information technology platforms can become an afterthought for agencies hyper-focused on service. Don’t fix and forget. Build a regular cadence for reviewing IT systems every two to three years and understand that organizations are inevitably forced to recalibrate IT systems based on new capabilities and evolving objectives.
Start with a plan that is aligned with business objectives and establish a schedule for revisiting that plan. Set goals and key performance indicators and monitor your organization’s progress to achieving those objectives.
But allow your organization a degree of flexibility. The challenges on the horizon that you can envision – changing demographics of your service area or microtransit consuming a bigger chunk of ridership – are exceeded only by the challenges you can’t envision.
The plan you start with might look different in five years. Your organization must be able to adapt. As conditions change, so should your strategic plan. Your IT plan can’t be a document that just sits on a shelf.
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Andy Wakefield is the director of Intueor Consulting’s Transit Operations Management Consulting practice. He specializes in ITS system selection and engineering. He assists transit agencies throughout the country with IT strategic planning, program management, CAD/AVL, operations, scheduling, voice and data communications and customer service system procurement and implementation.
Freya Gustafsson is a principal consultant for Intueor. She is the former director of enterprise systems at TriMet, where she spent more than 17 years in various analyst, engineer and management roles. She has experience in all aspects of transit operations including business strategy, operations analysis, strategic technology planning and implementations, asset management, change management, software engineering, data integration and analytics.
Thomas Day is a senior consultant with Intueor, managing Intueor’s research and communications. He is also an adjunct lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.
Corrinna Griffis is a senior consultant for Intueor Consulting. She has more than 10 years of experience in transit, focused on rail, field operations, and command center operations. Her areas of expertise include development and oversight of transportation operations policies, operating rules and procedures, communication protocols and regulatory compliance. She is a former bus and rail operations manager for TriMet and is a certified project management professional.
