|
Alberto Gonzalez, CIO/Administrator
Welcome to the first Idaho Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) newsletter.
Since joining ITS in October 2022, I’ve been humbled by the dedication, innovation, and hard work I have seen throughout this agency and beyond.
Several organizational and leadership adjustments have occurred over the last few months, and one area of focus we heard from many of you included improving agency communications with internal and external stakeholders, including our partner agencies, legislators, and even the public.
Our goal with this quarterly newsletter is to do just that—highlight successes and share details about what we are doing, what’s on the horizon, and celebrate agency partnerships. If, however, you would like to adjust your subscription settings, you can do that by clicking on Manage Subscriptions at the bottom of this newsletter.
Other areas we are focused on include improving our billing model, hiring additional resources to provide better service level support to our current supported agencies, and enhancing Idaho’s cybersecurity.
|
 ITS staff at recent team meeting
This year alone, ITS hired 43 new positions, with more active recruiting as we speak. The energy and opportunity within ITS are stronger than ever. ITS is investing in leadership training opportunities for employees, including both seasoned managers and also newly promoted staff over the next several months. These trainings are designed to enhance our goal of improved customer service and communications both internally, and with our external partners.
 On August 10th, ITS will host the inaugural Idaho Digital Government Summit focusing on information technology and trends and issues facing digital government today. The summit is designed to foster discussion and dialogue among local and state government. Invitees include cities, counties, education, and state agency representatives. Governor Little will be speaking at this event.
Successfully hosted in every other state, the summit goal is to help share details about the use of technology to operate more efficiently and better serve our citizens and customers.
Finally, I want to extend a personal thank you for your support and partnership. The future is looking bright for ITS, and I am so excited for what’s on the horizon.
|
|
Human Resources - Chrystelle Zimmerman, HRO
Creating Value in all Directions
The beginning of FY 2024 has truly been a remarkable time. ITS has had an extraordinary season of recruiting bringing our agency total to 178 employees. This is incredible news that comes on the heels of the past one to two years where the public sector was faced with a hiring crisis and unprecedented employee turnover.
As we begin the new fiscal year, we believe our services have never been more relevant. We continue to align ourselves with the Governor’s initiatives for IT Modernization as well as HR Modernization.
Thank you to the incredibly talented people in ITS for their commitment and hard work and delivering value everyday. We are able to do what we do because of our people! If you know someone who would like to learn more about the interesting and exciting job opportunities at ITS, please visit State of Idaho Careers for more information and search for "information technology."
|
|
|
Operations - Brian Smith, Deputy CIO
Service Delivery
Over the last several months, we met with several agency leadership teams to gather feedback on their experiences with IT Modernization and where ITS could improve its service to their agency. While a few common threads emerged as areas of improvement, one was the loudest of all: the need to increase the speed and quality of service delivery for day-to-day IT services.
In response, ITS has significantly invested in additional staff for service desk, on-site, and IT liaison support. Of the 43 new positions just added, ITS dedicated 16 of those to the customer-facing teams. This doubles the count of on-site support staff and made significant additions to the service desk. The ITS Service Delivery Managers team also increased in size from one to a team of four, spending more time with each individual agency to understand their needs and expedite solutions.
|
 |
|
New service delivery staff are being complemented by a new manager, Dan Thornock, who joins ITS from previous IT roles at Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) and Idaho Transportation Department (ITD). Dan has more than 20 years of experience in various IT service delivery roles and is helping mature and grow service delivery and customer service processes. |
Our customer’s feedback is critical to our improvement process as ITS continues to complete Governor Little’s IT Modernization initiative. We look forward to meeting the challenges facing our customers and helping them to better deliver on their important agency missions to Idaho citizens.
 Service Delivery Managers
What Do They Do and Why Are They Important?
Service Delivery Managers (SDMs) serve as the account executive, agency expert, and single point of escalation for agency leadership. This role develops valuable and meaningful long-term relationships with agency leaders, becoming an important asset and advocate for the agencies they represent. To accomplish this, SDM responsibilities include:
- Oversee existing relationship management (building partnerships with agencies, expanding relationships or improve relationships) with agencies, customer communications, customer satisfaction and conflict resolution
- Track and coordinate resolution of IT requests and incidents
- Prepare agency reports on service outcomes and participate in agency strategy meetings
- Discover agency needs and propose appropriate IT solutions
- Understand agencies needs and ensure appropriate and timely support is available
SDMs enable ITS to be a more proactive, responsive, and strategic IT service provider.
 ITS Service Delivery Managers: (L-R) Mark French, Chris Seffens, Elton Kelly, Tyler Zundel
|
|
Business Administration - Tim Tower, Fiscal Officer
IT Asset Management
Our customers have clearly expressed their expectation that ITS manage technology assets on their behalf, advising them on new investments and replacements in a timely manner and helping dispose of assets that have completed a useful service life. We are working steadily to meet that need. In the 2023 Legislative Session, the legislature approved funding and early hiring for an IT asset management position.
With two people now building the asset management program, ITS is set to make good progress on managing both hardware and software. The asset management team completed training in July and is putting it to good use, prioritizing focus areas to get the program off the ground. Ultimately, asset management will require customer collaboration to be successful. We thank you in advance for your patience and cooperation as we develop this new capability.
|
 New IT Support Cost Model
In December 2022, we hired a financial expert to update the ITS cost model, and have set specific goals for the update including:
- Increased detail with services grouped in understandable functions
- Increased transparency with clear explanations for what is included in each function
- Improved compatibility with external controls such as , grants, and other federal programs
- Improved accountability for large projects to ensure one agency does not subsidize another
- Attributing costs by usage, where possible, to allow agencies input on their costs
As development has progressed, we coordinated with analysts from the Division of Financial Management (DFM) and Legislative Services Office (LSO) and with seasoned financial officers in the most financially complex agencies to ensure we were on the right track. The new model will apply to the 2025 fiscal year and will include three main components:
- Base service costs by function distributed on the number of Microsoft 365 (or equivalent) licenses.
- Utilization costs, where service use by agency can be reliably captured.
- Large-project support costs, ensuring appropriate resources are dedicated to agency projects.
Revamping the cost model is a complex undertaking, but given the high cost of technology and tech support in the modern age, it’s a critical initiative to deliver for our customers.
|
|
Security - John Brown, CISO
Cybersecurity is happy to announce that the second annual National Guard training exercise for network penetration testing was a success. The training provided real-life, hands-on experience for National Guard members from a regional team of cyber security specialists from participating western states.
Additionally, the training exercise provided ITS with valuable insights on how to improve statewide network security. Future engagements will occur over the next few months providing further benefit to both entities.
On August 16th, ITS will host a tabletop exercise facilitated by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) which is part of Homeland Security. We will exercise our incident response playbook. The goal is to stress test our processes and procedures in a safe environment. The event will progress with the "heat being turned up" until it exposes weaknesses and opportunities for improvement in our program.
|
National Guard cybersecurity training exercise
|
|
Enterprise Technology - Tyler Jackson, CTO
Renewed focus on Enterprise Licensing Agreements
What are Enterprise agreements? They are volume licensing agreements that allows organizations to purchase software and services through a single agreement, rather than buying individual licenses for each product or service separately.
The ITS Architecture team is committed to partnering with agencies to find solutions that tackle multiple requirements and challenges across the state. Enterprise agreements offer many benefits, such as cost-savings through leveraging bulk purchasing power, eliminating redundant solutions, simplified IT management, and enhanced security and compatibility, allowing agencies to do more with less.
Here are some examples of Enterprise Licensing Agreements that ITS is currently evaluating:
- Office 365 - Cloud powered productivity and security platform
- Cloud contact center - Automated communication system that coordinates all telephone and electronic contacts between an agency and the public
- Software-Defined Wide Area Networking - Software-defined approach to securely and reliably connect agency users to applications
|
ITS GIS Team Receives International GIS Award Recognition
Ever wondered what happens to your call when you dial 911 during an emergency? Currently, those calls are routed on aging telephone systems to the nearest dispatch center. Now, with more people using cell phones to dial 911, Idaho is moving towards a new system called Next Generation 911 (NG911) to route 911 calls.
The ITS Geographic Information System (GIS) team has been working with counties, cities, sheriffs, emergency managers, the Office of Emergency Management, and the Idaho Public Safety Communication Commission towards meeting the GIS data requirements for this new system.
The team was recently honored with the Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award at the annual Esri User Conference in San Diego. Selected from thousands of users, ITS received the award for its work on NG911.
“We are immensely proud of earning this award for work done inside ITS by the contractors working on the NG911 project, and by people all over Idaho supporting those efforts” said Wilma Robertson, Idaho’s Geographic Information Officer.
|
 NG911 GIS Contractors (Clockwise from top left): Ali Scott, Tom Calton, Paul Reyes, Pam Bond
|
|
|
|
|
