Rightsizing for an effective IS department

An important part of the information system (IS) department's function is to provide timely, quality assistance to its users as well as its senior managers, who often need detailed information to make critical business decisions. Three principles for rightsizing the IS department so it can properly manage its resources are: 1. focusing on line management decision making, 2. providing clearly defined responsibilities, and 3. revising the structure of the IS department. These principles are based on the belief that the dynamic and often unstructured information needs of management should determine what is reported and when. A model for allocating the responsibilities for managing the IS resources, based on an evaluation of information needs at BellSouth Enterprises Inc., is described. Recommended changes in the structure of IS departments include: 1. recognition of the IS department as an investment center, 2. development of pricing schemes for marginal users and heavy resource users, and 3. establishment of a technical support group to coordinate and control computing capacity in the other business units.