Acting CIO Daniel Chan for the New York State Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) announced that the State’s IT Transformation program is in place. The goal is to enhance IT capabilities to improve government services and at the same time, build an IT environment capable of maximizing existing resources. According to Chan, the program will provide world-class customer service, create an innovative IT workforce, and provide cost-savings for the State.
The State Office provides IT services to 42 state agencies, sets IT policies and standards, and has led in strategic technology initiatives. The State has identified four strategic initiatives for IT Transformation to include:
- Data Center Consolidation—the 50 existing data centers across the state will be consolidated into two or three sites. The goal is to consolidate 11,000 plus services in the data centers
- Email Consolidation—the new model will use a single, statewide email system, migrating executive branch email users from legacy systems to an enterprise NYSeMail Service. Most users will be moved to a cloud-based managed service and mobile device servers will use a centrally managed service
- Enterprise Identity and Access Management—the project will provide state employees, businesses, and citizens with a single new user ID and password to allow them to access multiple systems
- Network Consolidation—the state will use modern communication tools, such as VOIP and video conferencing to promote greater inter-agency communication and productivity
In addition, agencies with similar IT challenges will be grouped into Clusters. Each Cluster will be led by a CIO representing the agencies within their domain. The clusters will handle, environmental and energy issues, finance/regulation/gaming, general government, health and human services, public safety, transportation, and economic development.
The IT Transformation will be a multi-year effort with three key milestones lasting until April 2013 followed by three waves of multi-year implementation. Milestone 1 in place for November 2012, has produced the design of the new ITS organizational structure, completed the definition of services to be provided by ITS Enterprise and Cluster groups, communicated the IT Transformation goals to all New York State offices, and is working to transfer IT staff to the new ITS organization. For more information, go to www.ittransformation.ny.gov.
The State of Delaware’s Department of Technology and Information’s “Statewide IT Strategic Plan for 2012-2014” at http://dti.delaware.gov/pdfs/strategicplan/Delaware-Statewide_IT-Strategic-Plan.pdf includes plans to upgrade the virtual environment. The state wants to improve cost effectiveness and believes that it is vital to house the state’s servers in secure, managed facilities using a virtual infrastructure. It is believed that the state can benefit greatly by managing cloud service providers. Public data would be placed on an external cloud but non-public data would be housed internally.
The state is looking to improve collaboration by examining video conferencing, instant messaging, desktop video, and document sharing. Enterprise Paging services are being investigated and may be combined with additional telework-related technologies.
Since 2010, the state has increased the use of VoIP by almost 50 percent and will move the balance of the users over the next several years. At the same time, the state is building out an enterprise wireless network to support both internal and external users across all three branches of government.
The state is addressing how to improve the management of mobile devices and has implemented a Mobile Device Management MDM) solution that administers remote devices across the enterprise covering all technologies such as iOS, Android, Google, and Microsoft. It is anticipated that this service will expand as all device renewals are incorporated into the MDM solution. At that time, all remote devices will be managed through the MDM solution.
