The Origin of ITS

ITS was formed by combining the Service Center Agencies' highly skilled IT specialists and support teams with a core team from OCIO into one organization of about 800 people, but distributed in agency offices across the country.The convergence plan is unique in the US Government. It is adapting best industry practices to organize IT resources and personnel efficiently and deploy them where and when they are needed.

The point of creating ITS was to have one unified organization dedicated to supporting both the shared and the diverse IT requirements of the Service Center Agencies and their partner organizations. On the one hand, the agencies were already sharing and investing in a common computing environment (and its infrastructure, network systems, and associated hardware, software, and training); on the other hand, each agency had to manage its own distinct computing systems, software, and IT support teams.

By converging both technology resources and skilled IT staff into one organization, ITS can efficiently focus a broad range of technology investment and diverse support, planning, and management services, spread equitably back to the agencies and replacing what might be considered triplicate efforts.

ITS has formed a customer support system based on a central Help Desk that can flexibly and efficiently dispatch technical support specialists who are with teams based at many agency offices.

http://www.ocio.usda.gov/its/origin.html