An outside IT director for an agency that does not have one
Every agency needs someone asking: what should we spend on technology, what could hurt us, and what should we do next year? We fill that role by the month, so IT stops being a series of surprises and becomes part of the plan.
Strategy, budget and judgment, without a full-time salary
A twelve-month roadmap
What to fix, replace and build, in order, tied to what your agency is doing: a new branch, a census jump, an accreditation survey, an EMR change.
An IT budget you can defend
Recurring costs, renewals and one-time projects on one page, so the owner sees the year and nobody is surprised in March.
A technology risk register
The handful of things most likely to hurt you, who owns each, what fixing it costs, and what happens if you wait.
Policies people follow
Acceptable use, AI use, mobile devices, remote work, access and incident response, written short and in plain language, then matched to what is really configured.
Vendor and contract review
The EMR, phone carrier, internet provider, copier and telehealth vendor: renewal dates, exit terms, security questions and whether each one has signed a BAA.
Growth projects
Opening an office, acquiring another agency, or moving suites: the IT plan, the cut-over and the checklist, so the new team starts on day one.
A quarterly review that fits on two pages
Once a quarter we sit down with the owner and the administrator and go through one scorecard. It is deliberately short.
- Tickets opened and closed, and how long they took
- Security posture: open findings, patch status, multi-factor coverage
- Backups: last successful restore test and how long it took
- Training completed and open items from the last review
- Spending against the budget, and renewals coming in the next 90 days
- Three decisions we need from you
When this pays off most
- You have one person who “does IT” on top of another job
- You are about to sign a contract you do not fully understand
- You are opening a branch, or buying or merging with another agency
- A survey or audit is coming and you want the IT evidence ready
- You keep paying for IT problems that come back
We work with the IT person you already have. A virtual CIO is the strategy layer. We can sit above your existing support, or alongside our own managed IT.
Consulting FAQ
Is this the same as managed IT?
No. Managed IT keeps the systems running day to day. Consulting decides what the systems should be next year and what it should cost. Many agencies use both; some only need the second.
Can you recommend products without a sales motive?
We recommend what fits and say what it costs. If we resell something, we tell you, and you can buy it elsewhere.
How big is an engagement?
It ranges from a one-time roadmap and budget to a standing monthly review. We scope it after a working session, and we do not publish a rate card.
Planning in practice
Policies the office can query, and an operations dashboard that turns a roadmap into things that run.
Staff get cited answers from the agency’s own policies, and learn when a regulation changes
Two closed-book assistants in Microsoft Teams answer only from the agency’s documents, with the source cited, and a weekly watcher flags when a saved regulation has changed.
Cited answers and a quiet watcher that speaks up only when it matters.
Running in productionRead the case study PlatformA one-click operations dashboard with an audit trail for every run
Recurring compliance and admin tasks became buttons on a Teams page, and every run leaves an append-only record an auditor can be shown.
Press a button; 43 seconds later the email, the Teams post and the audit row exist.
Running in productionRead the case study