Commonly Held Assets
ITS is the custodian of the State's largest and best equipped data center. Notice I wrote ITS is the custodian of this data center. We have not always acted that way. In fact, we still use terms like "our data center" or "come host at ITS' data center." Wrong. This is a facilty that is available to all State agencies. It is the State's data center.
Now, you may say, "well, how can it be the State's data center if ITS is responsible for recovering the cost of it?" That is a good question, but I don't think that having one agency have custodial and operational responsibility for the facility is mutually exclusive with it being viewed as a commonly held asset. ITS should only be the managing partner.
To further explain what I mean, consider this example: 3 guys go in together and buy an airplane. They discuss how to manage the finances of the airplane, and decide on an hourly rate for operations which will cover all of their costs. They ask the pilot with the most experience out of the three of them to collect the money from each of the other partners and arrange for maintenance, a hangar, insurance, etc. Now, I am not familiar with the financing arrangement that built the Salt Lake data center, but it belongs to everybody, and ITS is simply the senior pilot who manages things.
Certainly, there are adjustments that ITS should make. We need to stop calling it "our" data center, unless by "our" we mean all State agencies. I also believe that there are changes that we could make that would make it a more attractive place for agencies to bring their stuff. I will be working on this.
8:31:14 AM 
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