By Chris Millborrow, DtL Creative

Back in 2016 – in his Forbes article titled ‘The Changing Role of IT in the Future of Business’ – Daniel Newman argued that: “The modern IT worker is a tech-savvy innovator who creates change across the organization’s entirety, not just a single department. As employees create change across all levels of an organization, the new face of IT defies boundaries.”

To help us begin to investigate whether this was consistent in the social housing sector, during a recent event we asked a number of housing professionals whether IT was viewed within their organisations as:

• A reactive department which ‘keeps the lights on’ and responds to problems
• A strategic and proactive department driving change and supporting the organisation to deliver business objectives
• Somewhere in the middle

Of the 19 who responded, 11 considered IT to be solely reactive; six said that their IT department played both a reactive and strategic role; and only two said that they considered IT as more strategic and proactive than reactive.

In addition, in advance of this event, we conducted a small survey of registrants. Of the 22 social housing providers who responded, nine did have a current IT/digital strategy, and over half (13) did not, although nine of those were in the process of developing one. Of those who
did have an IT/digital strategy, five said that it did not have a large bearing on how they made IT and digital investments, whereas four said that IT and digital investments were driven by their IT/digital strategy.

What does this data tell us?

While this investigation is by no means comprehensive enough to draw any significant conclusions, what it does do is support what we often observe when working with social housing providers to update, improve, and develop new IT/digital/technology strategies.

These observations include:

• While there are plenty of good practice examples of housing associations who are benefitting from having IT and digital departments which create change and work across the organisation, fulfilling both strategic and operational roles, not all do. Some associations still hold traditional views and expectations of the IT and digital remit, viewing it as a reactive support provider and cost centre. As a result, in many organisations IT operates as a silo with no ‘seat at the table’ when strategies are being discussed and agreed
• Not all providers have a vision agreed between IT and ‘the business’, which clearly sets out the role that they want technology to play in supporting the organisation
• While most social housing providers have ambitions of developing an IT & digital strategy, many often do not know where to start
• Even when providers do have IT/digital strategies, they can often lack the key information required to drive actions and investment priorities. They often read as IT ‘wish lists’ or ‘todo lists’, as opposed to strategic business documents

The benefits of having an effective IT/digital strategy?

If developed using the right approach, an IT/digital strategy should:

• Demonstrate how the IT & digital remit will contribute directly to the achievement of the organisation’s strategic business objectives
• Build senior stakeholder support and business buy-in for IT and digital activities, increasing connectivity to and collaboration with the business
• Achieve alignment on and clarity relating to the IT and digital goals, principles, and priorities
• Set expectations for the services being provided and roles/responsibilities for delivering on IT and digital objectives
• Drive actions and investment priorities

The process of developing an IT/digital strategy can therefore help establish the IT and digital remit as one that is proactive, delivers strategic value, and is agent of positive business change.