A strategic framework is a structured way to understand a project proposal by helping you clearly define each key service objective and its customers. The framework then helps you identify the resources, partners, and innovations that might contribute to success. To be most effective, the strategic framework should work with one project-specific objective at a time. Strategic frameworks can be devised by one person and then presented to and reviewed by others, or they can be created through a facilitated group decision conference.

An analysis of the internal and external factors. The framework leads to an initial identification of potential resources, including partners, and to a closer look at potential uses for information technology and other innovations. To be most effective the framework should work with one service objective at a time.

The strategic framework helps project teams identify four factors (customers, resources, innovations, and partners) that will influence the definition, development, and operationalization of their project goals.

• Customers are people or organizations who make use of the service you intend to provide
• Partners are willing participants in a joint enterprise who invest staff time, equipment, money, or credibility in the creation and operation of the service. Partners share costs, risks, and benefits and engage in active, trustful working relationships with one another.
• Resources are something of value that is necessary to the success of the service. When using the strategic framework, it is usually useful to specify what resource(s) are associated with an organization, rather than just an organization's name.
• Innovations are products and services that could be used to design, develop, or deliver a new service or to offer an existing service in a new way.

Taking a high-level view. The framework lays out the full array of internal and environmental factors that can support a particular service objective by:

• Identifying existing and potential partners to help achieve those objectives
• Identifying information and other resources that will be needed
• Identifying innovative products and services that might be relevant
• Getting more specific about the customers of the service

Thinking "outside the box." Its focus on brainstorming resources, partners, and innovations pushes you to think more broadly about what is possible.

Recognizing multiple roles. In using the framework, you are likely to find that specific people or organizations appear in more than one place. For example, if your service objective is "to create a repository of geographic data for use by state and local governments," a particular state agency could supply data to the clearinghouse (i.e., be a resource) and use the clearinghouse to find data provided by others (i.e., be a customer). The same agency might play a major role in the design, operation, or financing of the clearinghouse (i.e., be a partner). As a result, you will eventually need to discuss issues related to developing and managing relationships with an organization that may play a combination of roles. Often these different roles will be played by different people or units within the same organzation.

Refining objectives in light of what customers need and what the environment has to offer. Another strength of the strategic framework is its capacity to reveal different "points of view." or POVs. You can experiment with this idea by completing separate frameworks from the POV of two different customers. (In the clearinghouse example above, these might be state agencies and local governments.) Compare the results. You are likely to find that the resources, partners, and innovations that would make one customer happy, are not entirely the same as the ones that would satisfy the other. Understanding this disparity will help you sharpen your service objective and will become an important point of departure when you move on to define the scope of your entire project. You may need to narrow your scope in a way that makes it customer-specific--or broaden it to include features needed to satisfy additional kinds of customers.

Focuses on "enablers," but ignores barriers. You are more likely to identify barriers through modelling, prototyping, and best practice reviews.

Lacks the detail needed to craft a project plan or design a system. Most importantly, this tool does not deal directly with the availability or cost of identified innovations, resources, or partners. It focuses your attention on what is possible rather than what is practical.

Andersen, D., S. Belardo, and S. Dawes (1994) "Strategic Information Management: Conceptual Frameworks for the Public Sector." Public Productivity and Management Review, 17 (Summer) 4, 335-353.

Center for Technology in Government (1996), Developing & Delivering Government Services on the World Wide Web: Recommended Practices for New York State. Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, SUNY. See Chapter 4, Case 3, Example 3A for a completed strategic framework and Exercise 1, Using a Strategic Framework to define a problem. www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/guides/developing_on_the_web/ developing_on_the_web.pdf