Shared Results: Strengthening the Enterprise

Section 1 Enterprise Transformation

The 79th Texas Legislature signaled a clear mandate to restructure roles and responsibilities for the state’s investment in information and communications technology. The Information Resources Management Act—Chapter 2054, Texas Government Code (TGC § 2054)—was restructured through enactment of several technology bills. The new laws provide the basic tools to strengthen the enterprise and establish the foundation for a shared technology infrastructure that will improve the delivery of state services to citizens.

Texas has made substantial progress toward fulfilling the vision of leadership; however, several opportunities and challenges remain that must be addressed to advance the state’s current capabilities. These include the following:

1.  Ensure the security of critical information and data. Safeguarding the state’s data and information resources is a shared responsibility that requires continuous, coordinated, and focused efforts. Texas state government’s infrastructure is a critical resource and additional provisions will ensure that it remains functional and secure.

2.  Improve state procurement and contract management. Texas already wields substantial purchasing power and can improve that position through new competitive contracting methods. By enhancing the Technology Cooperative Contracts program, state agencies will benefit through improved goods and services at reduced costs.  

3.  Evaluate options for statewide enterprise resource planning implementation. All state agencies are required to manage finances and human resources using sound business principles. Implementation standards and a statewide plan can improve the alignment of budgeting and expenditure reporting across the enterprise.

4.  Improve methods for collecting, reporting, and sharing technology information. Coordinated strategies and data collection methods will ensure that oversight agencies collect the information needed to effectively manage the state’s technology investment, while reducing the burden on state agencies for reporting redundant information.

5.  Set the stage for the next generation of online business and citizen services. The TexasOnline.com infrastructure, which provides the online face of state agencies and local governmental entities, must be adaptable and capable of acting on opportunities to benefit citizens and businesses.

Implementing the recommendations related to these critical issues will enable Texas to move forward as a unified enterprise. This enterprise transformation will advance the state’s ability to manage and leverage its resources and protect its assets, enabling agencies to focus on their core missions to better serve Texans. Each issue is detailed in Section 2.

Statewide Vision and Strategic Goals

The State of Texas’ goals and objectives for information resources management are presented in Shared Success, the 2005 State Strategic Plan for Information Resources Management. Shared Success articulates the vision that fulfills the mandate from Texas leadership to establish an enterprise approach for managing the state’s technology investment. To realize this vision the state must achieve these strategic goals:

• reduce government costs,
• drive effective technology contracting,
• leverage shared technology operations,
• promote innovative use of technology that adds value, and
• protect technology and information assets.

In developing Shared Success, DIR collaborated with stakeholders from state and local governments, higher and public education, the private sector, and other stakeholders. The key objective was to align the use of technology with the Governor’s stated vision of “ensuring that state government is limited, efficient, and completely accountable.”[1] This includes streamlining technology management and maximizing the state’s investment in technology hardware, software, services, data, and personnel.

Shared Success emphasizes that Texas must fully leverage its information and communications technology (referred to collectively as technology for the purposes of this report) investments and resources to meet its statewide goals. An enterprise approach establishes a shared technology infrastructure, where appropriate; fosters a collaborative environment to develop, implement, and share best practices; and promotes agencies’ ability to deliver business value through innovative technology solutions.

The Texas Model

Shared success is realized when technology resources can be effectively
leveraged across all sectors of government—including state agencies,
public schools, and other political subdivisions. The Texas Model of the
Enterprise, depicted in Figure 1, provides a paradigm for managing
the state’s investment in technology in a way that is fully aligned
with the state’s business goals.

The Texas Model is composed of three distinct but unified
layers: statewide infrastructure, collaboration, and agency.
The statewide infrastructure layer establishes shared
statewide resources to leverage in the delivery of
technology programs and services. Similar to utilities,
these operational services are needed by all agencies;
they are not unique or specific to an individual agency. A key initiative in the statewide infrastructure layer is the state data center services initiative, effectively fulfilling a long-standing directive from the Texas Legislature (see Appendix A, Data Center Services—A Case Study).

The collaboration layer builds on the statewide infrastructure layer. This layer establishes the programs, standards, and practices that guide the use of technology across the enterprise. By supporting the shared development of guidelines and best practices, this layer establishes a common basis for collaboration, interoperability, and reuse among state agencies. Key initiatives underway within the collaboration layer include the Texas Project Delivery Framework, the Enterprise Architecture/Service-Oriented Architecture program, and the Streamlined Reporting initiative.

Leveraging the two preceding layers, the most important part of the model is the agency layer. This layer contains the unique functions and services that each agency manages to successfully support its mission. Innovative solutions, developed at the agency level, must meet the policy goals of state leaders and deliver real value to Texans.

Together, the layers of the Texas Model of the Enterprise support the state’s vision for effective technology planning and service delivery. Shared Success presents the strategic goals, business-driven strategies, and statewide objectives, each aligned to a layer of the Texas Model. These statewide objectives and strategies form a roadmap for Texas government to plan for the essential resources needed to realize its shared vision.

Core Principles

As Texas government moves to this new technology planning and service delivery model, successful enterprise transformation depends firmly on three core principles:

• Business-driven approach
  Adopting sound, proven business practices to drive real value that is aligned with statewide strategic goals and objectives.
• Collaboration
  Engaging stakeholders to maximize resources, knowledge, and expertise that is shared across the enterprise.
• Accountability
  Applying a consistent method for assessing outcomes against clearly defined benchmarks for successful project execution.

These principles will be advanced through clear commitments, open and honest communication, and a collaborative approach that leverages the best and brightest minds across agencies, institutions of higher education, city and county governments, the public education community, and the private sector.

Examples of how each of these core principles is applied to the statewide objectives and strategies are provided in Section 3.

Progress

In fiscal 2006, the state made significant progress toward enterprise transformation through the following key initiatives:

• Data Center Services
  Shared data center services will leverage economies of scale, improve security and disaster recovery capability, yet maintain or improve existing service levels and reduce costs. This project has adopted an industry-proven approach and, with the active involvement of participating agencies, has met all major milestones with on-time deliverables. It has established and documented a process to compare current costs with vendor-proposed costs to determine the best value for the state. Details on the progress of this initiative are presented in Appendix A.
• Information Security
  DIR initiated cost-recovery operations as part of the consolidated network security system. The buildout for the Network and Security Operations Center (NSOC) is ahead of schedule.
• Network Communications
  The shared, statewide Internet protocol (IP) communications platform is an important first step in providing state-managed network services that enable agencies and other eligible customers to improve and expand data, voice, and video services.
• Shared Applications
  TexasOnline.com, recognized as the number one state government Web site in the nation, implemented over 80 new services in fiscal 2006. Another shared application, the enterprise messaging (e-mail) contract—which provides Texas state agencies and other publicly-funded organizations with high-performance, managed messaging and collaboration services—was executed in March 2006.
• Technology Commodity Procurements
  Technology contract renegotiations continued to increase statewide savings—$96.2 million in customer savings was identified and $68.0 million in actual savings was realized.
• Project Delivery
  The Texas Project Delivery Framework, a uniform approach for improving the management of and accountability for the state’s technology investments, deployed a new gated review process with structured templates and guidance.
• State Reviews
  DIR convened a Technology Information Alignment Committee to improve technology management, including more effective strategic planning, budgeting, and reporting of technology expenditures, assets, and projects.
• Data Management and Access
  DIR collaborated with other state agencies to publish best practices in data and electronic records management, developed administrative rules and guidelines to increase the accessibility and usability of state Web sites, and adopted rules protecting government information from inadvertent disclosure as a consequence of equipment disposal.