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Washington State Information Technology

Technology Strategy - IPMA Keynote

Bharat ShyamWashington State Chief Information Officer

May 22, 2012

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Agenda

• Important trends in technology and society• Culture and insight into state government IT• Goals of Strategic Plan• Organizational bets and principles• Action plan

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Important Trends in Technology and Society

• People are consuming (and expect access to) data and services at all times and from a variety of devices.

• Many inventive applications have been created using available government data.

• Employees expect to use a variety of personal devices to get work done.

• Publicly-available cloud platforms are very compelling and growing rapidly due to cost reduction and nimbleness.

• Software as a Service (SaaS) is an easy and cost-efficient way to adopt new technology.

• Government IT-run private clouds enable sharing, reduce costs and are becoming more viable.

Insights into State Government IT

• Washington state government is like a conglomerate: every department has its own distinct culture.

• Many key services could be much better if centralized or consolidated. – There is a lack of trust in the delivery of centralized IT.

• Many key services have very old applications and infrastructure that need replacing.

• No disaster recovery “story” for critical government services.

Insights into State Government IT

• Procurement is slow, fragmented and cumbersome.• Some employees are not adequately prepared to

incorporate and maximize IT in the workplace.• The digital divide is real and a barrier to opportunities &

services for some citizens. • Budgets are tight!

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• Innovate and deliver better services to make public interaction with state government more streamlined and responsive.

• Make government data more accessible to Washingtonians to increase transparency and to encourage private sector innovation.

• Continually focus on making state business operations efficient, nimble, frugal.

• Build and support credible, well-planned, trusted IT organizations that save money and make employees more productive.

IT Strategy Goals

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Organizational Strategies and Principles

• Take on ambitious projects in steps that yield value along the way.

• Promote centralization or consolidation where it makes sense.

• Build and maintain trust in our efforts by making our work transparent to state policy makers and the general public.

• Make smart choices on emerging technologies for long-term solutions.

• Leverage centers of excellence to experiment with new ideas and solutions.

• Develop plan for hiring and retention of state IT staff.

• Create robust communities of technology interest groups.

• Adopt a technology policy framework.

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Action Plan

1. Secure critical state government services and enable them to continue functioning after a disaster.

2. Improve accountability and insight into IT spending.

3. Begin adoption of Public Cloud Platforms where appropriate.

4. Adopt Software as a Service (SaaS) for applications purchased by state agencies where possible.

5. Adopt Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications systematically and incrementally.

6. Consolidate infrastructure to drive savings and deliver improved services.

7. Adopt Private Cloud Platforms across IT teams.

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Action Plan

8. Efficiently manage all of the state’s suitable data centers.

9. Encourage state agencies to systematically free up data (including GIS data) for public consumption.

10. Make it easier for Washingtonians to interact with state government.

11. Inventory and plan for the replacement of critical legacy IT systems.

12. Study how to attract and retain highly-skilled IT staff and build up IT interest groups.

13. MISSING: Deliver government data and services to citizens via all kinds of mobile devices.

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Action 1: Secure Critical State Government Services and Enable Them to Continue Functioning After a Disaster

• Most state agencies (including DOC, DSHS, WSP) do not have the ability to failover to a different pool/data center to recover from a disaster.

• Specifically, the OCIO commits to the following steps:– Identify most important agencies in need of a comprehensive disaster recovery plan

– Help these agencies create and track a schedule for creation of automatic failover in remote pools/data centers

– Identify and invest in Data Center space away from western Washington’s seismic fault zones

– Work with Security Experts to secure critical government services and infrastructure

• Letter Grade: Midyear: B (All letter grades should probably read as I for Incomplete)– DR: WSP planning on moving to new data center. DOC exploring strategies for disaster recovery

– Working on new security policy – workgroups formed

– Funding obtained for examining security of critical services and infrastructure

• What you can do– Be security conscious and train your non IT colleagues on IT security

– If you are responsible for a critical app, start thinking about disaster recovery

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Action 2: Improve Accountability and Insight into IT Spending

• We must provide easy tools for IT leaders in each agency to track their spending.

• OCIO will provide a dashboard experience for agency directors which enables the Legislature, OFM & Governor to have consolidated view of the state’s IT spend.

• Letter Grade: B– Gartner TCO results in hand - we are at average– Explored and identified an ITFM partner – working towards contract– Beginning planning for implementation of ITFM tool via budget process

• What you can do– Prepare for implementing an ITFM tool: Identify data sources for IT

utilization and spending like Ticketing, Logs, Time spent on Projects, Asset and CM dbs, Shadow Accounting systems, etc

– Be rigorous in your classification of IT spending (XY) for this biennium

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Action 3: Adopt Public Cloud Platforms Where Appropriate

• Negotiate purchasing relationships with providers• Identify workloads in state agencies that can move to public cloud platforms• Experiment with and adopt management toolsets to manage workloads • Explore possibility of creating a public cloud which satisfies restrictions for

higher security Government Applications (aka: “Government cloud”)

• Letter Grade: C– No contracts with major public cloud platforms yet– Lots of experimentation (DOT, DFW, DNR, etc.)– No work started yet on policies, toolsets and standards for monitoring and

managing cloud platforms• What you can do

– Sign up and start using cloud platforms – check out how to write and deploy an app, understand how security, authentication and monitoring works. All for free…

Action 4: Adopt Software as a Service (SaaS) for Agencies Where Possible

• Adopt SaaS solutions, where appropriate, with minimal up-front investment when it is cheaper to deploy and easier to maintain

• Specifically, we will try to adopt SaaS solutions in the following areas in 2012:– Learning Management, Personnel Performance Management, Time

Leave & Attendance, Email, Productivity and Collaboration applications

• Letter Grade: B– ADFS in test – on path to standing it up by mid year– Several negotiations & explorations under way in above areas

• What you can do:– Learn about the pros and cons of SaaS– Be open to SaaS solutions where there is a real advantage

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Action 5: Adopt Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Applications Systematically and Incrementally

• OCIO will introduce a policy framework which allows an incremental approach to building a cohesive suite of applications

• Build a roadmap of applications to be adopted statewide• Identify departments that have passion and need for specific application• Increase to several departments, roll out to entire enterprise, demonstrate value

at each step• Letter Grade: B

– Generally a belief that this is feasible – both as a SaaS and with a comparatively more modest budget

– Working on building justification for the next administration – it needs to be driven as a business – not an IT – project

• What you can do– Identify and document shadow systems in anticipation of an enterprise wide system

rollout (It is good practice anyway)

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Action 6: Consolidate Infrastructure to Drive Savings and Deliver Improved Services

• The OCIO will focus on: – Data Centers – Shared Email Project – WiFi LANs– Procurement– Identify a list of other areas where we can benefit from consolidation in the future

• Letter Grade: B– Shared Email project is nearing successful completion - May lead to Office 365– Data Center effort is back on track with changes– Procurement overhaul under way– Looking at other areas in CTS and DES where we could add consolidated shared services

• What you can do– Help CTS & DES be successful in WiFi, Data Center and other consolidated services– Help them standardize and Hold them accountable, push back on excessive charges but

don’t ask for custom agreements

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Action 7: Adopt Private Cloud Platforms to Enable Easy Movement of Workloads

The OCIO commits to the following steps:• Identify standardized Private Cloud stacks to invest in for managing Private

Clouds in WA state

• Identify at least 3 agencies that will begin building out interoperable, standardized Private Clouds

• Create and track a schedule for the creation of these Private Clouds

• Letter Grade: Heading to an F or A by end of year – We are not ready to adopt Private Cloud technologies because we have work to

do to just standardize & clean up our hosting environments

• What you can do– Standardize your hosting infrastructure – monitoring, patch management,

virtualization, etc

– Help CTS move to a standard hosting model

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Action 8: Efficiently Manage the State’s Viable Data Centers

• New State Data Center has been the source and focus of discussion

• Money spent on State Data Center is “sunk cost”

• Important to manage all data center assets that are built to acceptable standards across state IT

• Significant agency data consolidation due to virtualization has taken place, resulting in unused data center space

• The proposal to move all of OB2 to the new state data center in a bulk move has several problems

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Action 8: Efficiently Manage the State’s Viable Data Centers

• Consolidation done incorrectly can result in substantially increased costs

• Good reasons moving to the new data center are:– Inadequate data center facility

– Building disaster recovery capabilities

– Relieve the pressure on cooling in overburdened data centers

– Creating a new utility for smaller agencies

• Eventually, some data centers may need more infrastructure investment and may eventually move

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Action 8: Efficiently Manage the State’s Viable Data Centers

The OCIO will:• Identify data centers that will continue to be maintained• Identify the first set of agencies, workloads and systems that will move to the

new State Data Center

• The following actions are in Phase 1 for State Data Center:– The WSP team will begin moving into the State Data Center

– The CTS team will identify and move 20% of the workload in OB2

– The CTS team may also begin building a utility for smaller agencies in the State Data Center

– Incrementally build out the state data center hardware to accommodate these new workloads

• Letter Grade: C– Planning & Work under way for Phase 1

• What you can do– Work with CTS to utilize all your Data Centers well

– Help CTS drive towards a standardized suite of services as they make the move

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Action 9: Encourage Agencies to Systematically “Free Up” Data for Public Consumption

• Work with state agencies to identify solutions (like data.gov, geography.wa.gov) to house the data, and encourage widespread participation in the data sharing

• Work with the GIS community to rapidly deploy web services and tools needed to publish and easily consume GIS data

• The State’s Broadband Office is hosting a competition to encourage the use of government data to develop innovative applications for the general public. The OCIO will work with the Broadband Office to provide a single access point for researchers and innovators looking for government data sets.

• Letter Grade: B– Several agencies and people have been “activated” – not yet seeing a ton of data

on data.wa.gov– 20 governmental organizations have been “activated” on geography.wa.gov – over 150

new web services and apps to be published to the cloud with public assess

• What you can do– Get trained on using data.wa.gov and WA GeoServices & free up data sets that you

think are going to be useful

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Action 10: Make It Easy for Washingtonians to Interact with State Government

• There should be easy access to services across related departments

• Agency sites should be more small business friendly• OCIO will examine alternatives including:

– Enterprise wide group for creation & maintenance of sites for citizen interaction

– Focus on permits, licenses, portals, mobile access

• Letter Grade: B– Releasing acquisition for Website and e-Gov Services to do the portal work (May 25, 2012)– Established multi-agency E-Gov workgroup to make it easier for businesses to interact with the state

(Apr 2012)– Drafting high-level implementation plan to make it easier for small businesses. easier for to interact with

the state(Sept 2012)

• What you can do– Walk in their shoes, small improvements in workflow & UX matter. Collaborate to

make it better in ways big and small. Don't wait for the big plan.

– Start thinking about making important services available on smartphones

Action 11: Inventory and Plan for Replacement of Critical Legacy IT Systems

• Many key services have a very old legacy systems in place. Systematically replacing this infrastructure is critical for long term health of IT in state government

• The OCIO will:– Identify & prioritize the list of legacy applications that should be replaced in the next 10

years– Formulate a strategy for systematically replacing these applications & funding the

replacements• Letter Grade: C

– Early work identifying these systems (DRS, DOR, DSHS, L&I, etc.) and several of these teams are looking at how to replace this legacy

• What you can do

– Identify and kill little used applications under your control systematically

– Plan to replace legacy applications that need new functionality are hard to maintain & modify

– For the stuff that works and doesn’t need change, find a way to freeze dry it

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Action 12: Learn How to Hire and Retain Skilled IT Staff in State Government

• OCIO will work with Personnel Director to develop a technology personnel recruiting and retention strategy

• OCIO will foster creation of communities of IT personnel who are interested in a specific area to create a community of interest around specific technology or IT management areas

• Letter Grade: C– A couple of early communities created but not much momentum yet– Not clear exactly how we will get the funding for investing in IT employees

• What you can do– Take charge, be responsible for your own training & development since no

one else will

– Step up and participate in/create a community that looks at areas that you are passionate about

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Questions?

Thank You