By William Opalka

RENSSELAER, N.Y. — NYISO is proposing to change the way stakeholders prioritize internal projects, effective with the 2017 priority list.

The ISO reviewed its proposal at Wednesday’s Management Committee meeting, nearing the end of a process that began in the Budget and Priorities Working Group last September. “This is based on stakeholder feedback,” NYISO senior manager Ryan Smith said.

The projects include software and product development and NYISO capital expenditures.

NYISO scoring uses objective criteria that reflect strategic alignment, expected outcomes, risks and ability to execute. The stakeholders score projects based on their organizational priorities.

Among the proposed changes is the exclusion of mandatory and continuing projects from priority scoring. Stakeholders, who rank projects by assigning them shares of 100 voting points, would no longer have to “waste” their votes on projects that are already considered mandatory or are already under development, the ISO said.

NYISO also is proposing the use of sector-weighted scores in addition to raw scores. Affiliates and nonvoting entities would be excluded from weighted scoring but would be included in the raw scores.

Another change would provide cost and benefit information in advance of the stakeholder scoring deadline.

The timeline for drawing up the 2017 list includes identification of candidates through mid-June, followed by prioritization and evaluation by the end of July. That would be followed by recommendations in August, with final decisions made in the fall during NYISO’s annual budget process.

Project expenditures have averaged about $25 million annually in recent years, Smith said.

The changes are expected to be brought to a vote at the June board meeting.