Image caption: The Statewide IT Procurement dashboard provides greater visibility into IT procurements.
Over the past two years, NCDIT’s Statewide IT Procurement Office has transformed how state agencies must go about procuring high-dollar IT services and products. Introduced to all agencies in January 2023, the new process has resulted in greater efficiencies in the review and approval of such purchases as well as a better experience for agency customers.
The next step for NCDIT was to provide greater transparency and accountability by developing an information-rich dashboard reporting system.
Developed entirely within NCDIT and launched in April 2024, the system is integrated with the state’s eProcurement system and includes data from multiple resources that have been consolidated in a central database.
State agency customers and NCDIT staff now have greater visibility into procurements, which must undergo a 10-step process that includes privacy, security, legal and enterprise architecture reviews – all necessary to comply with state law and NCDIT standards.
The dashboard allows chief information officers and other leadership at state agencies to see where their requests are within the IT procurement process.
It gives NCDIT staff an overview of the number of active, completed and canceled IT procurements as well as more granular information, such as the number of steps still needing approval, and the target and actual dates for completing each step.
Knowing this can help procurement staff proactively identify issues before they cause delays and help procurements that are behind schedule get back on track.
Introducing Automation
The dashboard also provides the Statewide IT Procurement Office with other important insights that have resulted in increased efficiencies and more accurate data.
For example, while analyzing reports, the team found a significant number of procurements that appeared to be behind schedule – with only about 30% of the steps completed on time.
After investigating, the team discovered that the work had been completed but the eProcurement system had not been updated. This produced inaccurate data that did not give a reliable result or confidence in the system.
To address this issue, NCDIT implemented a cutting-edge solution to automate the manual step of marking reviews complete.
Additional automations were implemented to assign target dates for the completion of each step, review the steps nightly and move procurement to the next step if they are on schedule. If a step is not completed on schedule, the system alerts key stakeholders via email.
These automations have helped remove human error, improved data accuracy and saved time for all users. They also allow the procurement team to focus on addressing any bottlenecks that occur.
The most recent automation, implemented in December 2024, uploads documents for large procurements overnight, saving staff eight to 12 hours of manual labor per procurement.
Data now shows more than 80% of procurement project steps are completed on schedule and that number is steadily increasing.
The Statewide Procurement Office now has a strong foundation to reach its goal of at least 90% of procurement steps being completed on schedule, and the team continuously evaluates the process for potential improvements.
With a transparent, more efficient and customer-friendly IT procurement process, NCDIT is able to connect agencies with products and services in a timely manner and ensure procurements meet state standards and laws.