Information Resource Management at Hydro-Québec



Information Resource Management at Hydro-Québec

Introduction

Hydro-Québec had the asset of $58 billion in 2004. Hydro-Québec mainly deals with the general electric supply and has to produce electricity at reasonable prices due to competition in the market. The aim of the company is to become the major provider of the energy around the globe. The mission of Hydro-Québec's company is to provide sufficient energy and promotion of energy related to power and energy sector. A shared service centre (SSC) was included in January, 2003 under the responsibility of the vice-president to oversee the procurement services related to IT unit. There were six new divisions that support the internal services brought by SSC. These shared services include things such as Information Technology, material management, procurement, transportation service, document management and real estate management. The SSC was mainly divided into four units, which include Information Technology solutions, Information Technology operations, Telecommunications and network Services and office automation system. There were 1300 employees who were responsible to carry out operations under these shared services.

Discussion

In 1990s, there were improvements in the infrastructure of information technology in each company. Hydro-Québec has modified different strategies related with Information Technology sector from centralization to decentralization. DSI (Direction Solutions informatiques - IT Solutions) was held responsible to carry out all operations related to technological projects. The SSC had made approved changes, which were implementing in the office gradually. The SSC responsibilities were grown after a certain interval. The SSC had to look after the software implementations, Information Technology infrastructure and technological architecture, security management, development of interfaces with present systems, development of advanced functions, and tasks in current software, and improvement in this software. The SSC looked after all the internal and external factors within and outside the premises of an organization. The internal factors, which held immense responsibility to SSC, also include cost, time, expertise, equipment, software and infrastructure when needed for resources.

The external factors dealt by SSC in Hydro-Québec were not easy to control. These factors include competencies, technological capacity, customer behaviors that what they need and demand, outlook of the industry whether to establish the company as a local or global, economy as a company is moving towards peak or lacking, political movements as political movements also affects an organization in many cases, social environment and environmental changes. SSC was also responsible for giving solution of all the challenges which are faced by ...