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Phase 5: Open House
As ITS prepares to welcome Idaho State Police and the Department of Juvenile Corrections as part of Phase 5 Modernization, staff and directors from those agencies joined us for our annual open house and tour at ITS headquarters this month.
These in-person gatherings have proven to be insightful and a way to help quell rumors about who we are and what we do, right from our team. A lot of work is on the horizon as we prepare for upwards of 25 new hires next year.
Roadmap
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Many questions have come up about what projects ITS is currently focused on, and if they are in the planning phase, fully funded or perhaps on hold until a later time. To further communicate consistently across all teams, a roadmap is being developed and will be shared broadly with all staff. This roadmap will be available on our main SharePoint portal in the next few weeks. |
NASCIO
 Jerred Edgar, Jennifer Gonzalez, Brian Smith, and myself traveled to the annual NASCIO conference in New Orleans earlier this month. The gathering brings together chief information officers and their staff, along with hundreds of vendor representatives. Hearing from peers about successes, challenges, the critical necessity of communications, and working with state legislators and decision makers was valuable. I joined a panel of CIOs from Montana, North and South Dakota.
I am proud of the work we are doing in Idaho. It is refreshing to see what we can build upon, and where we are truly shining.
Thank you for all you do. As always, if you have questions or comments, my door is open.
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Laserfiche Rebuild Project
One year ago, ITS suffered a major data center failure. It resulted in the loss of hosted Laserfiche platforms for four supported agencies: Department of Water Resources, Public Utilities Commission, Department of Environmental Quality, and Division of Purchasing.
At the time, Christine Heimbigner and John Gonzales were not only new to ITS but new to state service. They were handed what could be viewed as an impossible task: get Laserfiche back up and running and hope that data recovery was possible. In the months that followed, response to that request has been nothing short of amazing.
John and Christine have worked many long days, and countless hours to not only recover the environment, but take a poorly architected platform that was inherited through Modernization and rebuild it from the ground up. What was once an application spread across a handful of servers for five agencies with no backups, redundancy or standardization, has become a true enterprise application.
Today Laserfiche is comprised of 45 servers, serving the latest Laserfiche versions across both development and production instances for six agencies. It includes the newly acquired Idaho Department of Lands, utilizing standard naming conventions, and current best practice licensing authentication models
The diagram represents the newly created and implemented architecture, developed by John Gonzales.
Fixing design issues from the original implementation was a major part of project. Christine worked directly with agency liaisons to rebuild missing forms and recreate workflows and business processes. Through her efforts, she was able to completely restore missing configuration items to DOP and PUC and create new ones to improve agency efficiencies and productivity.
This project would not have been successful without the experienced hand of Project Manager Liz Graham. Liz spent hours gathering, collating, and disseminating information, enduring long meetings, and providing valuable feedback to both the team and affected agencies. She made sure the project stayed on track, on time, and was the ITS voice to quell agency fears and apprehension.
As of today, the project is 86% complete, with a Dec. 2024 targeted final completion.
ITS was able to save the State of Idaho hundreds of thousands of dollars by completing work in-house that otherwise would have been outsourced to a third-party. John, Christine, and Liz epitomize our motto of Integrity, Teamwork, and Service.
ITS Leads Crucial Upgrades in ISLD Handheld Project
In the ever-evolving landscape of Idaho's IT modernization, each phase sees the integration of new technologies, people, and practices. For the AppDev team, this means managing applications from a diverse mix of programming languages, versions, and architectures, each developed with unique coding styles and practices.
This often results in custom applications arriving in various stages of completion such as Idaho State Liquor Division's (ISLD) new handheld project. These handheld devices are essential for inventory management across state liquor stores, forming a crucial part of ISLD's enterprise resource planning infrastructure.
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Clerks use the devices to scan bottles, and these inventory counts are transmitted to the liquor warehouse for processing, reconciliation, and order fulfillment. The efficiency of these handheld devices is vital for smooth business operations, automating much of the manual work involved in inventorying and ordering stock.
The existing handheld models had reached end of life, with significantly outdated software. This necessitated new devices and software for continued seamless operations. The initiative became a top priority for ITS.
Each year ISLD managers gather in Boise for their annual meeting and trade show. It's an excellent opportunity for vendors to showcase their products to store managers and prospective clients. When it was time to present our progress on the new application, we were given the choice to either demo it at the meeting or set up a booth at the trade show.
For our team, the decision was clear. Who wants to attend a formal managers’ meeting when you can attend a liquor trade show (no alcohol was consumed). Also, most testing scenarios are conducted remotely, making this a rare chance to gain customer insights as they use the tool we’re building.
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 From left to right: Alex Harris, Tom Brown, Jason Masner, Tsun Mok, Mark Davich
The AppDev team responsible for the handheld project sprung into action designing an engaging product demo. Our goal was to engage customers and test the handheld project in a fun way.
In tech it's easy to overlook the ultimate goal of helping people. Face-to-face interactions with software engineers, centered around the tools being developed, reinforces our customer-centric approach.
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ServiceNow Videos
In addition to ITS inaugural videos featuring Alberto and Chrystelle, our team is currently developing upwards of 25 new ServiceNow knowledge base videos as part of a training series. They are designed to augment documentation both internally and for our external customers. Standby for more on where they will live, and how to access them.
Staff Headshots
We are offering another opportunity for any staff members to get a headshot for your Outlook and Teams profile photos. We encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity. Many state agencies do not have talented photography staff like we do. As a reminder, these headshots are the property of ITS and may be used in newsletters or other promotional opportunities highlighting teams and employees.
Nov. 13th
- 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.
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2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
SharePoint Update
The Communications team has been busy adding additional content and functionality to the ITS Portal. In addition to the weekly news updates, many of the ITS teams now have a home page linked in the top navigation. On each home page, you’ll find team information, including what they manage and any additional information. As appropriate, each team member has their primary duties or areas of expertise, along with a quick link containing their contact information. You’ll also find related quick links and resources unique to each team.
We are also happy to announce the launch of the Project Management Portal. If you’ve ever wondered what the project teams are currently working on, you can find a breakdown of each team and related projects all on one site, including resources and links for how to submit project requests and more.
Check out the new site here.
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Cybersecurity Focus of the Month: Integrity
Integrity is key to ensuring we make sound decisions based on consistency regardless of time and space. We often store data in file repositories for later use. Auditors inspect this data to ensure accuracy. For example, Idaho maintains integrity of elections through post-election audits, voter identity validation, and paper copy backups. These methods enhance data integrity while providing a process to validate results.
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Cybersecurity Statistics of the Month: Trusting Election Information
Halloween decorations are going up. Pumpkins are being carved into Jack-O-Lanterns. Kids are planning their costumes and competing with the best routes to get the most candy. Hackers are hiding their identity and competing on their best way to exploit the upcoming elections for fun and profit. Just on the other side of Halloween, the 2024 presidential, state and local elections are looming close.
Efforts to combat these attackers playing tricks and taking treats are ramping up as well.
One of the best ways to avoid getting tricked is to know where to go to get accurate information on elections from official government sources. According to recent surveys, this is still the most trusted source of truth.
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 For the State of Idaho, the Secretary of State official's website, https://voteidaho.gov/, is the one source of truth for upcoming elections. This resource includes information about voter registration, voting locations, and election details.
Please verify election information you receive through email, social media, and favorite AI before trusting it. This is the best way to avoid the masked trick or treaters of the season.
Cybersecurity Shoutout of the Month
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This October cybersecurity shoutout of the month goes to Anna Pace from HR. Anna has worked diligently to ensure ITS Leadership is informed of pending administrative actions and tactfully reminded of important actions for our team.
Her efforts help build integrity within ITS by ensuring we can trust that the processes are timely, accurate, and accountable.
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 Invitation to Provide Testimony
The Idaho Legislature’s Change in Employee Compensation (CEC) Committee welcomes your written testimony on state employee compensation. Responses will be collected through Nov. 30th and the committee will consider them in its recommendations to the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee. The committee considers written testimony from the public and recommendations from the Division of Human Resources (DHR) to evaluate the state's total compensation system, including market related changes, specific occupational inequities, merit increases, and the benefits package.
DHR is facilitating the collection of testimony from state employees through this form.
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If you would prefer to submit testimony directly to the CEC Committee, you may do so by emailing them at ceccommittee@lso.idaho.gov. Thank you for your dedicated public service and for providing us with meaningful feedback on state employee compensation.
Performance Goals & Appraisals
ITS HR has updated our SharePoint to include resources and key dates around performance goals and appraisals. We also recently held training for managers and supervisors on the annual performance appraisal process. As a result, your supervisor may encourage you to complete a self-review.
The main purpose of the self-review is to highlight successes, accomplishments, and work that occurred during the rating period. Feedback submitted in the self-review will be taken into consideration and may or may not affect the final rating and appraisal. Talk to your supervisor about how they prefer to receive your feedback. You can find more information regarding Performance Goals & Appraisals here.
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Policy Updates
New Bereavement Leave Request Form
The Statewide Sick Leave Policy was updated in July 2024 to include bereavement leave. As a result, a new form has been created to simplify the process. Please see the new Bereavement Leave Request Form that corresponds with “Section 3: Sick Leave." Employees can now request up to five days of bereavement leave within a year of a family member's passing without extra paperwork. Leave can be taken at once or over multiple periods of time and will be deducted from the employee's accrued sick leave balance. For additional information, you can also view the Bereavement Leave FAQ. The new payroll code “BER” is not quite ready for use yet. We anticipate having it in December. In the meantime, use “SIC.”
Conflict of Interest and Outside Employment
The State of Idaho strives to avoid and properly manage any conflict of interest between an employee’s public duty and their private interest, including outside employment, as well as disclosure of relatives and romantic relationships which could pose a potential conflict of interest. See the Statewide Conflict of Interest Policy. The purpose of this policy is to outline expectations for reporting and managing real or perceived conflicts of interest in the workplace. Please use the Conflict of Interest Disclosure Certification Form. Sign and route the completed form to your supervisor and ITS HR for consideration.
Welcome New Employees
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We’ve had a surge in hiring lately. We are excited to welcome 11 new employees to ITS over the past few weeks.
Read more about your new colleagues here.
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 Staff Updates and Employee Spotlight
The Procurement Services team is fully staffed for the first time this fiscal year with the addition of Danny Warn, our new Senior Buyer. Danny started at ITS on October 15th. Danny has both procurement and IT experience and served in the Air Force where he was a Staff Sergeant and handled supply/logistics. Danny also has prior state experience with ISP and DHW, and we are excited to have him on our team.
Holly Winfrey, at just over one year at ITS, is the longest tenured financial services member. Holly has been with ITS financial services since July 2023 as a financial specialist. She started her state service with the Idaho Transportation Department in Oct. 2017.
You likely have worked with her on any number of the following duties she performs: telecommunications billing, payables and reconciliation, accounts receivable and monthly statements.
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Holly started at the same time we were going live with Luma and with a new CFO. It was a challenging time to be a new employee, and she had to dig in quickly with the small team. During her first year at ITS, Holly took on extra duties as personnel and new system changes created day-to-day challenges. In the past few months, Holly has assisted in cross-training all the new members of our Financial Services team.
Holly and her husband like to take motorcycle trips on their Harley Davidson and DIY projects around their home. She’s a joy to work with and we are grateful for her significant contributions, which have enabled us to complete necessary functions.
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Please visit the Fiscal intranet page on SharePoint for helpful information, documents and website links.
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Ian Cannon was extremely professional, friendly and respectful. He was able to get me back into my computer within 15 minutes so that I could start work for the day. He is very capable and a skilled asset to the ITS team.
FIVE STARS!
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"Last week we had an issue with one of our users’ computers where the monitor was not working. Rather than a huge delay, Michael Holt and James Muse came out to IDOC and took the time to swap the monitor, took care of the old one and left a happy user behind.
Throughout the process it was just excellent customer service. Sometimes when we have split agencies your guys go the extra mile, but no one knows, and I wanted to let you know that it was appreciated."
- Bob Leake, IDOC IT Manager
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Did you miss a previous edition? Check out the newsletter archive below!
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