Thursday, September 19, 2002

Homeland Communications According to the Deseret News, "Utah is a strong contender to be part of a national pilot project linking as many as eight states to integrate communications, law enforcement and health services for homeland security."  The announcement was one of a series of initiatives announced by the National Governors' Association today at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.   Governor Leavitt is co-chair of the NGA's task force on homeland security.  "Since 9/11 states, all levels of government, and the private sector have sprung into action. But no matter how well intentioned or how well funded these efforts are it won't make much of a difference if they're not all connected and communicating," said Gov. Leavitt, who is a member of President's Bush's Homeland Security Advisory Council. "The place for that to happen is at the state level and NGA's new initiative will help us immensely in this endeavor." The task force will also look at ways to strengthen drivers license standards and authority.  The National Governors Association's (NGA) Center for Best Practices also released its "Governor's Guide to Emergency Management Volume Two: Homeland Security" today.  Members of the State Homeland Security Enterprise IT project team should review this document.  The cabinet approved action yesterday for the team to proceed with a more in depth scoping development of the project. The National Cybersecurity Strategy (the alternate URL is http://www.securecyberspace.gov/ ) was released yesterday, but I haven't had time to read it yet.  And it has had plenty of coverage elsewhere, including the San Francisco Examiner and the Washington Post. 2:17:57 PM

eProcurement in State Government PriceWaterhouseCoopers has release a new report entitled, State Government E-Procurement in the Information Age.  This study reviews Utah's eprocurement efforts both in its early participation in the EMall project (about 8 states with Massachussetts taking the lead), and the joint eprocurement project that the state undertook with Colorado.  Although those projects were not wildly successful, Utah has experienced significant savings through eprocurement.  Utah was an early adopter of a state procurement card, the electronic procurement office is funded through savings from this process Utah was the first state to implement a statewide fuel network, automating the processing of hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel.  Reduced accounting and clerical costs amount to about $450,000 per year. The state created an automated, online ordering system for its central stores in 1996 and was later able to eliminate its warehouse through a master office supply contract which made all office supply orders available online at significant discounts.  Deliveries are made within 24 hours of order placement.  This process has saved thousands of dollars. The state has also placed all contracts online in a searchable system, as well as current bids and allowed vendors to subscribe online for specific notification services. The state has automated the process of distributing bids for major construction projects (roads and facilities).  Due to the tremendous number of documents and drawings associated with these bids, they are often distributed by CD rather than across the internet, although project updates and management functions are performed online. Although all of these efforts have been successful, the state is still looking at eprocurement as an enterprise project with the potential to save time and money by completing the purchasing cycle electronically for all types of purchases and develop a more comprehensive online catalog. 8:06:00 AM

Utah's Enterprise IT Projects Yesterday, the Governor Leavitt's cabinet unanimously approved charters for three enterprise projects.  The projects are 1) electronic Resource and Eligibility Product (eREP), 2) the one-stop business registration project, and 3) Email Consolidation.  Each of these projects differ tremendously in their approach.  eREP is a massive project with $18 million or so allocated for the first phase.  A contract has been awarded to IBM.  The enterprise project executive is Connie Laws. We expect the one-stop business registration to become a model for other cross-agency projects.  It involves participation from local government (three cities during the initial phase), the federal government (IRS is on-board), and numerous state agencies.  It would be easy for the scope to creep on this one and become unwieldy, but we have an excellent enterprise project executive, James Whitaker from the Department of Workforce Services, who will keep it moving forward. Finally, the email consolidation project will move forward with the creation of an enterprise engineering team that will put together the details of this project which is focused on infrastructure and consolidation. The cabinet also voted to approve moving ahead into the next stage for master licensing which has been recast as "enterprise permitting", the common payment portal, and the homeland security project which is actually several projects rolled into one. 7:15:02 AM

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.