
Mark Kirk
Osage Nation
Director of Information Services Group
What can you tell us about your department and organization?
What would you say is your leadership style?
What can you tell us about some of your current projects in IT?
The Osage Nation is spread across a coverage are of 2.304 sq miles (U.S. Census). Our main headquarters is in Pawhuska OK on 160 acres. Right now there are 105 facilities that span across the entire coverage area and this building project focuses on putting in two new buildings on the headquarters campus which will house a welcome center and a direct services center which would include departments like accounting and support staff. The master campus plan that is in place and set to be completed over next 3-5 years is to consolidate into as few buildings as we can. Our first two buildings of this multi-phase program are set to open this summer. It’s been a challenge but a very fun project to work on. It’s something that has been needed for a long time and IT has been involved with the development stages so we could ensure that the building was well-equipped with state of the art equipment and the ability for solid coverage. This building program also feeds into our move for improved business continuity. We have been fortunate not to have any major impact due to weather or other factors however we always want to prepare for the worst and hope for the best and have the ability to be fully operational especially with communications, in the event disaster strikes.
The second project that has been ongoing is our; Osage Nation Tribal Information System- (ONTIS). It’s a blend of Microsoft Dynamics and SharePoint to create a document management and CRM solution. Our goal is to have this be in use by all departments. We expect two more years before everything is fully rolled out but realistically it’s going to be something that is always evolving based on the needs of our organization, which is why it’s a great asset to have a flexible system. We are working with Planet Technologies as our partner on customizing the system and helping us to maximize its potential. So far it’s been rolled out to; enrollment, education, TANF, election and constituent services. The goal of the project is to centralize the data, help ensure accuracy of it and improve efficiency and service of every department. We will be focusing a lot of resources in 2015 on moving forward with the ONTIS project. With budgets remaining flat this year, something like this could mean big savings across multiple areas of the organization, which would be a huge plus to the benefits we are already seeing with this project.