Wednesday, March 02, 2005

UWIN Funding a Priority An article in the Salt Lake Tribune this morning calls out funding UWIN initiatives as a priority for the $20 million in homeland security funding that has been allocated to Utah this year.  Great! 8:24:47 AM    comment []

Consolidation to Become Law Assuming now that Governor Huntsman will sign HB109, Utah will join other states with a consolidated IT department reporting to the Chief Information Officer.  The bill passed yesterday.  The transition officially begins on May 2, 2005 and lasts for a period of 16 months.  We have already begun to plan, that will go into high gear once the selection of a CIO is completed.  Some things must begin immediately: Assessment of IT personnel and skills throughout the state Selection of an enterprise asset management systems to track all assets coming into the new department. Selection of a portfolio management system to manage all projects initiated and supported by the new department. Identification of all services that will be provided by the new department and a rate model and service delivery model. Formalization of enterprise architectural model and standards. Identification of all critical data stores and locations. Some of these are already spelled out in the bill, others are not, but may be just as important.  A comprehensive consolidation plan will be developed.  In an earlier post, I shared a del.icio.us feed where we are sharing information from other states' consolidation efforts.  We are now in the process of comparing all existing ITS rates with other states and private sector entities.  Then, an entirely new rate model must be built for the new Department, no small undertaking.  An article in Public CIO recognizes that IT has become an integral part of EVERYTHING that governments do: "With this shift has come the realization that a government's IT strategy must be tightly woven into the fabric of its business objectives, budget formulation process, service delivery strategy, and political dialog." We must be careful to ensure that as IT becomes its own separate department, there is an even tighter integration into the business of government.  Upcoming agenda: Statewide Information Security Conference - March 7-8 eGovernment Product Management Council - March 9 Business and Technology Expo - March 9-10 UWIN Governance Board - March 11 University of Utah Industry Forum - March 25 Data Compression Conference at Snowbird - March 29-31 Vint Cerf lecture - April 18 Systems Software and Technology Conference @ Salt Palace - April 18-21 NASCIO Midyear Conference - May 4-6 Final Meeting to Approve Region 41 700 MHz Plan - April 1 NASTD 2005 Western Region Seminar (in Salt Lake City) - June 4-8 ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference - July 28-31 8:06:59 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 David Fletcher.