IT Program Director

The NC Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is seeking an experienced program manager. This lead management role will work with multiple internal and external stakeholders, project teams, divisions, departments, and vendors to strategize, implement, and maintain the Child Welfare Information System (CWIS) modernization initiative. This position will interact with all levels of staff in DHHS including executive staff. This position will ultimately be responsible for ensuring that projects in DHHS serve to advance and enhance the departmental IT roadmap and goals.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Single point of DHHS accountability for the design, development, and implementation of new Child Welfare Services Information System
• Accountable for making sure that vendor responsibilities and deliverables are fulfilled as per the contracts.
• Coordinates and ensures all DHHS deliverables and tasks owned by– program, practice, product, project managers, training & readiness, technical, and security team are completed.
• Enables and manages optimized governance of Child Welfare Practice & Technology Program (CWP&T).
• Provides leadership and direction to remove obstacles/risks/issues and help ensure program team members have all the tools and guidance to successfully execute on key deliverables.
• Partners with the Product Executive and the CWP&T Executive Leadership Team (ELT) to communicate program goals, objectives, and potential outcomes.
• Leads regular interactions with the Product Executive, the CWP&T ELT, and the Child Welfare System Governance Committee (CWSGC) to inform, alert, negotiate and maintain a continuing good relationship and shared vision for the program outcome.
• Evaluate projects from an Enterprise perspective, ensuring alignment with business needs, IT roadmap, architecture and security standards, internal controls, and IT methodology.
• Establish leadership, define standards, process, and community of practice to facilitate cloud computing within our organization in support of DHHS business and strategy requirements.
• Lead cross functional project teams, and workgroups.
• Build and maintain effective working relationships with business stakeholders as well as technical leaders within IT and other engineers throughout the organization.
• Assist in the development of policies, standards, and guidelines that direct the selection, development, implementation, and use of Information Technology within the enterprise.
• Research and present ideas for the improvement of systems and processes for consideration by project Managers
• Work with business and cross-functional teams to develop Business Case and Cost Benefit Analyses for prioritized initiatives within the program.
• Manage multiple Vendor onboarding and identify key requirements needed from cross-functional teams and Vendors.
• Work directly and indirectly with other program managers to identify risks and opportunities across multiple projects within the department.
• Manage budget across various workstreams and funding channels for maximum productivity.
• Manage resource allocations and expectations for CWP&T Program.
• Collaborate with the State DIT to ensure program compliance with the State IT Roadmap and all State Privacy and security requirements.

Skills:

• The selected candidate must be a results-oriented individual with a strong work ethic and must be able to demonstrate excellent leadership, negotiation, time management, facilitation, and organizational skills.
• Experience in the management of a portfolio of multiple projects that may be in significantly different stages of development or have differing timelines and priorities.
• Experience in communicating in a fashion tailored the audience and their needs.
• Excellent written communication and presentation skills
• Demonstrates experience in working effectively with all levels of staff, clients, and other IT personnel.
• Experience in the responsibility for acquiring and utilizing the necessary resources and skills, within agreed parameters of cost, timeframes, and quality for a program.
• Experience in proposing and leading strategic initiatives
• Ability to identify and plan systematic corrective action to reduce errors and improve the quality of the systems and services, by examination of the root causes of problems.
• Demonstrated ability to provide advice, assistance, and leadership in improving the quality of IT projects, by focusing on program definition, management, repeatability, and measurement.
• Ability to build, influence, lead and motivate effective teams towards end results.

Management prefers applicants with the following:

• Candidate with PgMP Certification
• Experience managing or supervising programs involving Cloud infrastructure, Application modernization and modularization projects.
• Experience collaborating with State and Local Government
• Experience in complex, cross-functional team environments
• Knowledge of Child Welfare Information Systems or similarly complex case management systems

Skill Matrix

• Program Management experience managing multiple large complex projects Required 5 Years
• Experience creating and/or managing product roadmaps Required 5 Years
• Proven track record of delivering IT projects within budget, scope and schedule Required 5 Years
• Objective decision-making ability based on strategic objectives priority, business performance analysis and resource availability Required 5 Years
• Hands on experience managing project risk, cost, schedule, quality, testing, and communications Required 5 Years
• Strong supervision, organizational, interpersonal and time management skills Required 5 Years
• Demonstrated presentation, training skills, oral and written communication skills. Required 5 Years
• Solid work experience with project management tools (e.g. Microsoft Project) Required 5 Years
• Experience with MS Office(Word, Excel and Power point) Required 5 Years
• Strong organization and analytical thinking skills with experience preparing Project plan for complex business needs. Required 5 Years
• Ability to communicate effectively at all job levels, use excellent evaluation skills, and ability to relay information in legible reports as required Required 5 Years
• Experience with Agile Methodologies. Highly desired
• PMI certification Project Management Professional (PMP) Desired
• Experience with Cloud technologies & SaaS applications running on Cloud Desired
• Experience collaborating with Federal, State and Local Government Highly desired
• Experience managing implementation of a statewide IT project Desired
• Experience in establishing and/or implementing governance models for IT modernization efforts Desired
• Experience with Child Welfare Information Systems implementations Highly desired