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 It is honestly hard to believe that 2023 is coming to a close. It has been an exceptionally busy year at ITS, and only expected to get busier. ITS continues to fill new positions and existing vacancies. With several new agencies proposed to join us next year, more positions will be posted with more movement anticipated. In October, ITS hosted an open house to welcome employees from potential new Modernization agencies that could join us next year, including Department of Labor, Lands, and Division of Liquor. Besides a great turnout, it generated a lot of good conversation and questions with our staff. Thank you to everyone that joined us.
 Agency staff at ITS open house
Other potential agencies joining us as part of Modernization include Military Division, State Public Defender’s Office, and Historical Society.
Tied into those potential new positions and further ITS growth is our preparation for the 2024 Idaho legislative session, which is around the corner. The leadership team met with legislators, the Governor’s Office, and agency directors through the summer and fall, with ongoing conversations to this day. With our budget submitted, more information will be gathered and shared as we continue to work with our partners at the Division of Financial Management and Legislative Services Office.
 I would like to share a bit about the Oct. 7th Chinden Campus Data Center power outage—as we know how much it impacted both supported and non-supported agencies over the holiday weekend. The magnitude of this unprecedented event was a huge deal. I want to apologize again on behalf of ITS for the stress this inevitably caused many of you.
I want to take a moment to recognize ITS employees who jumped into action during that event. The absolute collaboration, hands on deck approach, troubleshooting, communication, and determination to bring the system back online in time for start of business Tuesday, Oct. 9th is without a doubt, a true testament to the amazing team we have. When the outage was first detected Saturday morning, staff took it upon themselves to come in immediately—on their own. They worked around the clock to get systems back online, and I couldn’t be more proud despite the circumstances.
With regular updates to the Governor’s Office, agency directors, IT liaisons, and thousands of employees through the weekend, the teamwork displayed was remarkable. A comprehensive debrief about this outage and root cause will be shared during the Director’s Meeting on Dec. 13th.
 Finally, you might have noticed that ITS has an updated look and feel—right down to our agency logo, branding, and colors, and what I am so excited to share with you, our new website.
While our web address remains the same, the newly rebranded its.idaho.gov, is a huge upgrade for us. You’ll notice that information is presented in an understandable and accessible format, and most importantly, reflects our focus on customer service and transparent communications. We’ll be regularly updating our Customer Spotlight and News sections, so please, stop by, and let us know what you think as we continue building upon it!
A major kudos to our Communications team for the huge lift in managing and pulling together all the pieces as part of this transformative effort!
As always, thank you all for your support throughout this busy year. Wishing you a warm holiday season as we gear up for 2024!
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ITD Data Center Project
The ITD Data Center relocation project, which involves moving the Idaho Transportation Department’s (ITD) systems and infrastructure from its State Street location to the Chinden Campus, is a high profile, time-sensitive project. The move was prompted by the 2021 ITD flood and the state’s intent to sell the entire property.
Project planning and foundational work started in advance of Phase 3. ITS, ITD, and contractors kicked off the project in July 2022. In total, some 35 to 40 employees and contractors have been involved.
The project included three phases:
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Phase 1 - Establish baseline network, server, and storage environments at Chinden to support migration work. Completed ahead of schedule.
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Phase 2 – Physical and virtual system move, which was further broken down into Migration Waves. Completed ahead of schedule.
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Phase 3 –Finalization. Decommissioning remaining unused hardware, establishing final network connections and addressing final details ahead of transition. Completed ahead of schedule. Main project completed with final application migration anticipated in early 2024.
Interesting project stats:
Number of servers (virtual) moved:
- 56 migrations and a total of 76 virtual machines with more planned
- 258 servers with 131 left to move
Number of physical devices moved:
- 19 large physical devices
- Several switches and other smaller pieces of equipment
- 16-18 devices are slated for decommissioning
Cost Impact:
- $3-7 million based on external bids to rebuild ITD data center
- No additional funds requested for ITS to complete data center move
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 ServiceNow Launches Dec. 4th
Moving to ServiceNow ticketing system from Ivanti is part of our effort to align services with the Secretary of State’s Office and other core support agencies.
ServiceNow offers a wide range of integrations to support critical activities in Luma, including procurement, asset management, employee onboarding and offboarding, and automated workflows. In addition, it offers better support documentation and configuration capabilities and robust integrations with other enterprise tools.
The first iteration is just weeks away with multiple phases of refinements and improvements planned.
Our consultant, CRI, will provide training and modules are currently being finalized.
Communications about targeted training opportunities and other important details will be shared within the next two weeks. SDMs are communicating directly with agency IT liaisons.
As IT Modernization continues, the capabilities ServiceNow offers will be critical for ITS, as we continue to meet demand for our larger customer base. We are excited about this process and realize it is a lot of change happening quickly.
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Cybersecurity Message of the Month:
Social Engineering and the Value of MFA
Over the last month, we have noticed a big uptick in social engineering attacks. These attacks have been utilizing both publicly available information about State of Idaho employees and information about State of Idaho projects and business systems to trick users into either clicking on links or falling for scams.
Two things that have successfully deterred a number of these attacks:
- A healthy dose of skepticism. If you are contacted by somebody who asks you to perform an action, especially if it is from a new contact or looks suspicious, take a moment to verify their identity before taking any action. Visit cybersecurity.idaho.gov to learn how to avoid being phished.
- Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) whenever possible. MFA reduces the risk of compromise by 99.22% according to this Cornell University study.
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 Since joining ITS in May 2023, developing and elevating our communications strategies, messaging, collateral, and products hasn’t been a sprint, it’s been a non-stop run. I am so proud of the collaborative work we are doing both internally and externally, especially with our agency partners and customers.
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New ITS Website
As Alberto mentioned, we launched our new website Nov. 2nd. This entire process has been on a very expedited timeline and wouldn’t have been possible without feedback and collaboration from our colleagues and partners.
We know there will be some fine tuning and adjustments as anticipated. Please don’t hesitate to share feedback with us, and you can do that by sending an email to ITS-Communications@its.idaho.gov.
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New Logo & Branding
We are in the process of updating all of our documents and collateral, right down to our letterhead, PowerPoint templates, and email signatures and many other items for internal and external use.
Our new logo, look, and feel are another step towards highlighting who we are, and the customers we serve.
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Internal and External Newsletters
We knew from past feedback that ITS communications both internally and externally could be improved—we heard you and agree! One place we have focused on is how we share information internally, and also with other stakeholders. Using this e-delivery newsletter format, employees now receive a monthly newsletter, and our external newsletter is distributed quarterly to all supported agencies and employees. ITS is also using this format, as we did during the recent Data Center outage in October to share frequent updates directly with our customers—which is some eight thousand Idaho employees.
The above items are just some of our larger, public-facing communications updates—with more in the works. Internally, we are tightening up our communications processes, through collaborative efforts and standardization.
Thank you all for your collaboration, warm welcome, and support throughout this very busy year.
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 NEW – Purchase Requisition Process
Currently, all requests to purchase items are facilitated through Ivanti. As mentioned in the ServiceNow article above, Ivanti is being replaced in early December. During November, ITS will transition away from Ivanti for purchase requests and begin using Luma Procurement.
There are many benefits to the new procurement process, including approvals, routing, fiscal coding, billing, statewide integration for customer purchases, and efficiencies throughout the entire process of purchase requests, purchase orders, fulfillment, payments to vendors, and reconciliation.
There are also challenges with managing both ITS and customer assets within ServiceNow and integration with data from Luma. The ServiceNow transition team is working through many steps to go live next month. Once complete, ITS will be able to provide valuable reports to our customers through ServiceNow.
Once Luma Procurement is live for ITS, we will be training our staff. Our customers are already using Luma Procurement, which will make this transition easier for purchases.
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2023 October Cybersecurity Awareness Training
In 2022, 96% of organizations were targeted by an email-related phishing attempt (Mimecast, 2023). Due to this, it is more important now than ever to be diligent in preventing security breaches for your agency.
All state employees have been automatically enrolled in annual cybersecurity training in Luma. The title of the training is “2023 Danger Zone (Social Engineering)” and will take approximately five minutes to complete.
Training is due by Monday, Nov. 13th.
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We're Hiring
ITS continues to hire for positions. If you know someone who would like to learn more about the interesting and exciting job opportunities at ITS, please visit the ITS Current Job Listings page.
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