Overview
The National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE) hosted the TSMO and Information Technology Virtual Peer Exchange to share information between a cross section of agency leaders in the transportation operations and ITS function and the information technology function of their jurisdictions. Their experience in developing and implementing IT and TSMO plans, programs, technology, strategies, and policies in their organizations provided the basis for an exchange of ideas about methods to address the challenges and opportunities with operations technology applications.
The goal was to share successful real world strategic and tactical experience from agencies that are working through the process of collaboration between Information Technology (IT) and TSMO agency functions that have been historically separate. There was an emphasis on sharing successful approaches that can be adapted and applied to other peer organizations. There was recognition that agency staff are working to create new opportunities to work together in problem-solving, but it is still a work-in-progress in some regards.
The participants were encouraged to actively participate by sharing their questions, comments, and current practices among each other. The topics within each broad session were crowd-sourced by participants using a virtual white board then voted for the priority topics to discuss. Those not touched on are noted in Next Steps at the end of this report. Attendees were asked to consider the actions their agency may need to take to align desired goals and objectives between the TSMO and IT functions for their agencies to resolve the current and future challenges.
Participants are able to reach out to presenters for further information or assistance, and were asked how the NOCoE, its partner associations, and FHWA help them in their journey to improve collaboration between TSMO and IT.