Information Technology Authorization Committee
Minutes
Present
|
Tom
Betlach |
Office
of Strategic Planning & Budgeting |
|
Phyllis
Biedess |
AHCCCS |
|
Dr.
Linda Blessing |
Board
of Regents |
|
Maureen
Haggerty for Dave Byers |
Supreme
Court |
|
Al
Crawford |
Private
Industry |
|
John
Jacobs |
Private
Industry |
|
Dr.
Bill Lewis |
Public
Sector |
|
Danny
Murphy |
Local
Government |
|
Craig
Stender |
GITA |
|
Peter
Woog |
Private
Industry |
|
Dr.
Michael Gentry |
Federal |
|
Senator
Dean Martin |
Arizona
Senator |
|
Laraine
Rodgers |
Private
Industry |
|
Representative
Roberta Voss |
State
Representative |
Call to Order at
Call of the Roll
Director’s Report
Approval of February Minutes
Motion to approve by Linda Blessing; second by Peter
Woog.
Approved.
Project
Approval
l DES IT 2002
Refresh Project
Frank
Somers, GITA Oversight Manager
DES
representatives: Bob Buse, Todd Bright
Linda
Blessing Those printers are big ticket items,
aren’t some of them?
Bob
Buse But they are very high volume.
Al
Crawford $1M for additional software? That’s 25 percent of the total. Any additional licenses or updating what
you’ve got?
Bob
Buse It’s a combination of software upgrade and
new software products that have been identified within the organization, we
need a new processing environment.
Al
Crawford We’re taking advantage of the
State contracts?
Bob
Buse State contracts, of course, wherever
possible, and where existing license contracts have been negotiated by
Government Information Technology Agency
and/or existing DES contracts.
Al
Crawford I don’t know if it’s DES or the
(inaudible)—where are we as far as asset management, the software technology
facilitates managing PC assets that have been distributed—(inaudible) control,
downloading, keeping track of the inventory—where are we?
Craig
Stender Many of the large agencies have
software managing that. We have not
officially named a particular software product as being the one and only that
agencies need to use.
Al
Crawford At one point it was a major
project of Government Information Technology Agency to try to identify a
standard set of assets, software products that would do that. Did you back off of that?
Rupert
Loza, GITA Planning Manager We
currently have an asset management system called Information Services Inventory
System (ISIS). We also established a
statewide standard called Configuration Management which says you must comply
with ISIS even though the agency may have their own asset management system and
established their own standards for the agency.
You must be able to interface or download to the ISIS statewide asset
system.
Al
Crawford Is that operational now, and is it
effective?
Rupert
Loza For
our major agencies, yes, it is. For
smaller agencies, they use GITA’s website/online system, they do submit their
stuff through our web site.
Bob
Buse Part of the software in the proposal is
associated with the requested hardware, some of the software is needed in
support of our operational activities, as well as our asset management control
process. We’ll procure software in order
to assist us in this effort because DES has found it impossible to deal with it
from a manual perspective. So, after
discovery through the use of a software tool, we will be able to maintain a
workable inventory. At this point, since
we did our major expansion of our network, we no longer have the multitude of
standalone PCs we used to have and we’re networked connected. With everything being network connected,
we’re in a position of better implementing the asset discovery and management
tools.
Tom
Betlach Two questions: Going back to the statewide database, do we
publish a snapshot at any point in time of what state agencies have in terms of
assets?
Rupert
Loza We do that for architecture and any
time an agency wants to look at it, that’s fine, it’s available. I don’t think we published anything for ITAC
at this point in time. That’s a
possibility, if needed.
Tom
Betlach So it would be PCs, printers?
Rupert
Loza PCs, printers, servers, routers,
switches, software, all that stuff.
Bob
Buse The Government Information Technology
Agency’s package also include IT resources in terms of staffing, so it’s fairly
comprehensive in terms of what it tracks, providing all that information from
an agency perspective is a difficult chore.
They allow you to enter hardware and software, and hardware and software
can be either aggregate or in detail, based on an agency’s requirements. There is a potential an agency could get some
use out of that system based on the amount of detail entered, but it is up to
the agencies whether or not they want to enter aggregate data and/or detail
data. The system’s documentation states
that it tracks change in the configuration, but I haven’t seen that capability,
so it doesn’t really track change management in relationship to hardware and
software, but it does allow you to associate software with hardware. It deals with all network connectivity,
including hardware and software as well.
Al
Crawford You implied that ISIS, this
inventory reporting, may be useful to a big agency but not necessarily?
Bob
Buse Not necessarily because we’re going to have
……..’
Al
Crawford My experience is unless it is
useful to you, the data is worthless because it never gets updated and is never
correct.
Bob
Buse Once we get our discovery products on line,
we’ll be dealing with ongoing upgrades, having to update anything in both
systems.
Craig
Stender ISIS is more of a data warehouse for
the inventory. Agencies will use
software to do more sophisticated inventory tasks; ISIS is more of a data
warehouse for looking at the whole State inventory.
Al
Crawford If the input to that data warehouse
is not useful because the inputters, they have no motivation to update or keep
it correct. Isn’t that your experience,
Bill?
Bob
Buse It’s a duplicate effort for the agencies to
include, to supply Government Information Technology Agency with the
information.
Rupert
Loza This ISIS is something we never had
before and it’s very beneficial for architecture. We look at those components, those items
necessary for network infrastructure, security architecture and would not have
been able to accomplish the things we’re doing in enterprise architecture. To get into the platform architecture, we
look at ISIS and determine what is targeted and what is beneficial for the
state. Yes, we do get annual updates
along with the IT 3-Year Plan on PARIS.
Again, the agencies have every right to maintain their own inventory
control of asset-based systems, but they still need to supply us with that
information on an annual basis.
John
Jacobs Where do we stand on refresh of PCs
on a statewide basis? How are we doing
that?
Rupert
Loza Agencies submit their refresh plans
through PIJs on a periodic basis. There
is no policy or mandatory effort on refresh for State agencies. Probably do this every three years or as
required, based on business needs.
Tom
Betlach There are several large agencies
where this Committee has approved sort of ongoing refresh policies – ADOT,
AHCCCS, others.
Craig
Stender We thought of that, not necessarily in
the budget process.
Tom
Betlach I’m not going to (inaudible) one
bit.
Linda
Blessing Changing the subject, I don’t know if
people want to bring closure to that in any way. I’ll support this particular PIJ, but want to
make a general request. As we proceed
with the enterprise architecture, (inaudible) now, that PIJs like this for
refresh, it would be helpful if Government Information Technology Agency staff
would review the purchases for compliance with enterprise architecture and make
a comment as to this conforming to the standards or principles in the
enterprise architecture. Sort of an
opinion, if you will, so we on ITAC won’t have to worry that we’re refreshing
in a fashion that would (inaudible).
Craig
Stender Actually, state that in the recommendation.
Frank
Somers If it doesn’t fit enterprise
architecture, it’s not going to be approved.
Linda
Blessing I know there are sometimes exceptions.
Craig
Stender We can spell them out, but that is our
intent because the architecture is not just an academic exercise. It will be used in the whole life cycle of an
IT project from the time a PIJ is approved to the purchase of resources and
also in oversight of the project.
Linda
Blessing In order to operationalize that, a
simple sentence or two in the cover letters from Government Information
Technology Agency would sure help me out as an ITAC member.
Dan
Murphy Is
it really necessary for refresh PCs and things to come to this Committee? They meet the architecture and standards that
Government Information Technology Agency has established. Is there a reason, why would we need to look
at this? Why can’t agencies move on?
Frank
Somers The law requires that projects of $1M
or more be reviewed and approved by ITAC.
Dan
Murphy They
do. Maybe so much as look at change in
that particular.
Phyllis
Biedess Maybe we could do something along with a
consent agenda.
Craig
Stender I think we could do that
recommendation.
Phyllis
Biedess I support this project, but having read
it, it also says this will help you in
terms of your interface… I know we put a
lot of pressure on DES because of Prop 204.
Will what’s happening here assist you to do a better, faster job on the
interface to the agency and in response to agencies?
Todd
Bright In some cases, this will allow access to the
Internet. In this case, (inaudible). I
was convincing (inaudible).
Bob
Buse We did write our PIJs to be fairly
broad-based so we will add $4M support the Chairman would (inaudible). It’s going to be in terms of catch, catch can
as we work our way through (inaudible)
Government Information Technology Agency in the process. (inaudible)
Phyllis
Biedess I think the answer you gave me was this
is overall what you’re attempting to do, which you necessarily don’t have the
money in the budget to do it.
Bob
Buse That’s right.
Phyllis
Biedess My question will make it easier for a
business partner of yours may or may not be in.
Bob
Buse That’s right.
Motion
by Al Crawford to approve; second by Tom Betlach.
Approved
No
discussion
Meeting
adjourned at 10a.m.