Bureau of Information Technology Services (BITS)

Chief Information Officer (CIO) and IT Director: Neeraj Kulkarni

What We Do

The Bureau of Information Technology Services (BITS) administers technology services for all parts of the Department, providing services such as business intelligence and data administration, applications development and support, server and network support, workstation support, data collection and processing, and technology strategy and planning.

The Bureau also establishes and manages information technology standards, policies, and guidelines that assure a secure environment for all electronic resources. The Bureau partners with the Department's Divisions to develop technology solutions helping deliver various services to Wisconsin's employers and workforce. BITS provide helpdesk services to all DWD offices, locations, external partners, and citizens accessing our applications, and provides various information technology related services to other state agencies.

The Bureau serves to provide a secure and reliable technology computing infrastructure for the internal and citizen facing applications and is responsible for ensuring compliance with various state and federal IT Security standards and policies.

Various functions and services of the Bureau are described below.

IT Security, Compliance and Risk Management

The DWD IT Security team strives to preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of DWD and citizen data while maintaining efficient and effective IT operations for DWD. DWD IT Security collaborates with our divisions and DOA/DET to ensure that DWD complies with laws, regulations, and industry standards. The DWD IT Security team facilitates annual IT Security awareness training for the Department and makes every effort to promote security awareness across the Department.

Applications Development

Our application development teams work with our business partners in each Division to identify opportunities to improve business outcomes by creating or improving application systems. Our software applications development teams include software architects, developers, project managers, and technical business consultants who work closely with the business managers, business analysts and staff in each program area to architect, design, develop and test solutions that deliver value from our technology investments. We provide support for the applications we deliver, working with our business partners to identify issues, resolve problems and support/maintain the applications as business conditions and our technical environment evolves.

While developing software applications for our business partners is a large part of what we do, we are also trusted advisors with a substantial understanding of our partners' business functions. We assist our business partners in process analysis and redesign, and evaluating, procuring and integrating commercial software solutions when that is the highest value benefit. We are the technology liaison for our business partners, and advocate for their needs with other state agencies and technology service providers.

Business Intelligence

The Business Intelligence (BI) Team works with our business partners to convert data into actionable information. This includes integrating data from multiple sources, building data structures that support operational, tactical and strategic decision-making, and supporting self-service tools and training that allow business partners to access and analyze their own data. The BI team places a heavy emphasis on the ability to visualize data to help business partners identify trends and outliers, with the goal of using this information to improve the services DWD provides.

Document Processing and Management

The DWD Document Management (DM) Service Team provides development and support for application systems and software services that use specialized platforms for document capture, digitization, data extraction and transformation, workflow and business process management, and document management. These document processing and management applications are often integrated with the Department's various business applications using a variety of integration methods and tools. The service supports applications for all the Divisions within DWD as well as applications for the Department of Children and Families. The current product platform for document capture, transformations and workflow/business process management is Kofax Total Agility. The document management platform is OpenText eDocs. The service helps achieve the goal of streamlining operations by reducing paper processing in the Department.

IT Solutions Center and Workstation Support Services

The DWD IT Solutions Center (ITSC) and Workstation Support Services (WSS) teams provide a comprehensive, multi-tiered approach for managing and supporting agency desktop computers, software, and integration with agency applications. The ITSC provides centralized service desk functions that include: providing agency staff a single point of contact for IT related issues, fulfilling service requests, building and deploying computer devices, and providing identity and account management services for the public when accessing agency applications. The WSS team administers the overall desktop management systems for the agency, hardware and software automation tools, SharePoint administration, desktop integration with agency applications, and second and third tier support for IT related issues.

Technical Support Services

The Technical Support Services (TSS) provides management and support for the Department's IT Infrastructure including network, servers, application servers and database servers. TSS is also responsible for research, evaluation, project planning, installation, implementation maintenance, and on-going support for DWD's various internal and external websites, and technologies used to provide services within DWD and for our external partners. The Technical Support Services team works closely with the Department of Administration-Division of Enterprise Technology (DOA-DET) for provisioning, on-going support and maintenance of DWD's overall IT infrastructure. TSS collaboratives with other agencies and DOA-DET for definition and review of state-wide enterprise IT infrastructure and technology services.

Computer Batch Processing

The Computer Batch Processing Services team provide continuous support for batch application job scheduling, monitoring and problem resolution for all the Department's business applications, and for business applications of other state agencies include the Department of Children and Families (DCF), the Department of Health Services (DHS) and the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB). Batch operations involve a set of computer programs that use a collection of data transactions, processed in sequence to achieve expected business outcomes. These data exchanges facilitate business programs and processes. As an example, payments distributed to unemployment insurance claimants are completed because of certain batch processing. DWD subscribes to the Department of Administration-Division of Enterprise Technology's (DOA-DET) Mainframe and Enterprise Distributed Batch Scheduling services for support and maintenance of the Control-M, Control-O, and Control-D environments. The team is available 24/7/365 to provide batch processing and monitoring services to ensure batch processing is completed in a timely manner as necessitated by our business partners.

Bureau Performance Management

The BITS IT Service and Budget Performance team aims to provide cost-effective, efficient, business partner-focused delivery of IT procurement, IT Services and BITS budgeting processes. The responsibilities for the IT Service and Budget Performance Management include IT budgeting and IT procurement services, IT service monitoring, IT service creation and cost recovery models, and technical project management services.