STATE OF MONTANA INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY STRATEGIC PLANS

A MESSAGE FROM THE STATE CIO

A new decade of information technology (IT) brings great expectations for change and innovation. Technology has advanced at a rapid pace and shows no signs of slowing down. We can expect advancements in technology to exponentially double, as defined by Moore’s Law, and suggested by the writings of futurists like Ray Kurzweil. The possibilities for change and innovation in the next decade also come with challenges for individuals and organizations that provide IT services and support.

The State of Montana will focus on key areas to keep pace with the changes and complexities that await us. Our plan for providing state-of-the-art IT services and support will be predicated on five goals.

Fiscal Responsibility

Technology will not get cheaper – According to The Scholarly Kitchen, there are at least three significant IT areas where costs will continue to rise: bandwidth, skilled personnel, and security. The State will provide a clear statement of budgeting objectives when considering these constraints. We can realize efficiencies, optimize costs, and create a sustainable and balanced budget through enterprise wide collaboration. Goals and objectives supporting transparency, improved efficiencies, and sound business decisions will remain fundamental values. Coordination of fiscal decision making across the enterprise is key to ensuring fiscal success.

Optimization of Shared Services and Support

Doing more with less – TechBeacon notes that IT organizations must strive to tackle heavier workloads with increased productivity and efficiency, and measure and improve customer satisfaction. This is a current challenge in state government, but we can make improvements. We will continue to deliver technology services in a deliberate and cost-effective manner to all customers. We will accomplish this by automating and streamlining the delivery of technology services, while improving time-to-value for business processes

Cybersecurity Enhancements and Strategy

Cyber security, awareness, and education – Cybersecurity and risk management is the top priority for state CIOs, according to the most recent National Association of State CIOs’ survey of top ten technology priorities. The State of Montana remains committed to identifying, protecting, detecting, responding, and recovering from cyber-attacks and incidents. We focus on protecting and preserving citizens’ data and the State’s information assets. Employees share in this responsibility by maintaining security awareness and integrating security best practices into their daily functions. The State utilizes security, privacy, and risk management frameworks to manage a comprehensive cybersecurity program that provides a secure computing environment. This enables the delivery of services to our citizens. We will continue to invest in the people, processes, and technology supporting our cybersecurity program to continuously improve the State’s security posture.

Unified Digital Government (e-Government Services)

Accelerate digital transformation – Digital Government Services, according to Granicus “…are defined as service delivery within government — as well as between government and the public — using information and communication technologies”. The State defines an electronic government service as “…an application, or series of applications, on the Internet that provides a specific service to a citizen or business…”. Montana has enjoyed two decades of providing innovative and high-tech e-government services. State and local government entities, along with universities, will offer new technologies and innovative approaches to services and support for our citizens and business customers as we enter the next decade.

Service First!

Build and sustain relationships - Service is the foundation for all support provided across the enterprise. Each employee is guided by the “SERVICE FIRST!” principle as we interact with those who we support at all State government levels. Providing excellent service is the best way to foster cooperation and collaboration between agencies to support Montana citizens. The Business Relationship Management Institute states that adoption of BRM principles “…ensures that the potential business value from meeting business demand is captured, optimized, and recognized”.

This IT roadmap outlines how the State of Montana will spend smart, collaborate smart, protect smart, be enterprise smart, and remain business smart to benefit Montana.

TESTIMONIALS

Department of Revenue

SITSD participation is critical to the success of our IRS onsite reviews that occurs every three years. We begin prepping for this review several months in advance and it takes up an extraordinary amount of staff time. The IRS stated in our closing conference that this was one of the best sites they have reviewed. This is due to the hard work of many, including our great partnership with SITSD.

I work with SITSD on a regular basis as a member of the Montana Information Security Advisory Council (MT-ISAC). They work with State agencies and private sector members to develop best practices to protect the enterprise.

Margaret Kauska, Chief Security Officer – GSLC

Department of Natural Resources and Conservation

The DNRC has been using ServiceNow as a tenant of DOA SITSD since May of 2019 Plans are in place to add HR, Finance and Payroll to enable greater utilization of catalog requests and workflow for both request and incident resolution tasks.

The DNRC uses the Service Desk and Service Catalog portions of ServiceNow and are very happy. We’ve developed a handful of catalog request items and have received very positive feedback on the potential for greater throughput for DNRC Office of Information Tech. Incidents that require multiple disciplines for resolution are much better tracked and shared using ServiceNow than our previous service desk software solution.

We are anxious to roll out more catalog request items before the end of the year and during the beginning of 2020, plan to utilize software and hardware asset management within ServiceNow, connecting it to our SCCM subscription to automate much of the adding and tracking of IT assets and improving the tracking of software subscriptions and license maintenance activities.

We are excited about the current abilities and planned usage for reducing the busy work of our under-resourced staff (doing more with less!)

John Adams, Application Development Manager

Montana Arts Council

The Montana Arts Council is pleased with UDW, we especially like how it helps spread the cost out over several fiscal years. With the CPU’s we were having to spend between $1,200-$1,600 per new machine every five years and due to budget issues, we had some machines longer than seven years. This way we can budget for it through our fixed costs and have less obsolete equipment.

Jenifer Alger, Chief Financial Officer

Department of Labor and Industry

Based on requirements by the US Department of Labor (USDOL), states must deliver Labor Market Information (LMI) to their users via electronic format. This equates to states either building and maintaining their own websites or utilizing outside contractors. Either option can result in exorbitant costs for the states. A partnership between the Montana based LMInformer Consortium and SITSD was formed that provides a cost-effective alternative for states via a Montana hosted website environment. Virginia and Ohio have recently joined the consortium allowing them to provide customized LMI data visualizations to their customers while meeting their USDOL requirements. This could not have happened without the tremendous support and highly responsive service of SITSD.

Mike Peery, Director, Labor Market Information Division

Department of Administration

The State Information Technology Services Division assisted us in the development and implementation of a new Risk Management Information System (RMIS) to more efficiently manage workload. We migrated over 23,000 legacy records and now have improved navigational features, better reporting capabilities, and more efficient storage of electronic documents. We are pleased with the product and greatly appreciate the professionalism of the State Information Technology Services Division staff.

Brett Dahl, Administrator/Chief Risk Officer, Risk Management & Tort Defense Division

Department of Justice/Department of Criminal Investigation

The partnership between the Montana Analysis & Technical Information Center (MATIC) and SITSD has improved the strategic posture toward cyber threats targeting the State. SITSD has been a proactive partner by sharing information through the Montana Information Security Advisory Council, the Election Cybersecurity Workgroup, and cyber exercises. This collaborative approach has improved our ability to assist stakeholders in the protection of emerging cyber threats targeting critical infrastructure and key resources within Montana.

Anne Dormandy, MATIC Supervisory Agent

Governor’s Office

SITSD has done a great job implementing improvements to the budget process. Last budget cycle, Tech Budget was loaded with actual billing for each agency and they had ability to edit their projected services. Tech Budget gave each agency the ability to split services to whatever level of detail they wanted to. Tech Budget also included a report function that gave agencies the ability to export data into excel to review and create internal reports to aid in the input of their IT budget into IBARS by reporting level. ITSD has been very open to suggestions on how to make this system as useful as possible over the past few years.

Errolyn Lantz, Budget Office

IT STATUTE PRINCIPLES

Share our Resources

Montana will use shared platforms and systems to minimize IT expenditures, improve service delivery, and accelerate service implementation.

Improve Business

IT will be used to provide educational opportunities, create quality jobs, support a favorable business climate, improve government, protect individual privacy, and protect the privacy of IT information.

Use Resources Wisely

IT resources will be used in an organized, deliberative, and cost-effective manner.

Deliver Services

IT systems will provide delivery channels that allow citizens to determine when, where, and how they interact with state government.

Protect, Privacy, Data, and Systems

Mitigation of risks is a priority for protecting individual privacy, confidential data, and IT systems.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

• Spend Smart
• Collaborate Smart
• Protect Smart
• Enterprise Smart
• Business Smart

ACCOMPLISHMENTS TO BUILD ON

Accomplishments are categorized according to the Montana 2018-20 State Information Technology Strategic Plan goals.

Secure

• Improved network security by replacing the legacy DNS system with highly available, fault-tolerant DNS, DHCP, and IPAM services.
• Implemented a secure email gateway that enhanced the State’s email environment. This improves message delivery, reduces false positives, and blocks sophisticated malware and phishing messages.
• Implemented application-based external firewalls that enhanced network security and increased network traffic visibility.
• Completed enterprise web application firewall (WAF) implementation. This enhances the State’s protection of external facing web applications, sites, and associated data.
• Deployed behavior-based anti-virus to all State workstations to protect, detect, and respond to ransomware and other advanced malware attacks.
• Partnered with the Montana Analysis & Technical Information Center (MATIC) to form the multi-agency Election Security Workgroup to facilitate communication, collaboration, and coordination to secure the State’s elections.
• Partnered with the Department of Homeland Security to conduct the State's first public/private statewide Cybersecurity Tabletop Exercise.

Shared

• Improved the agency ITPR process by enhancing the request portal and providing training and process documentation.
• Conducted business relationship assessments and established periodic meetings with agency business and technology leadership. This will enhance Agency/SITSD partnerships, improve SITSD communications, and align SITSD offerings with agency business objectives.
• Improved business relationships and communications by providing enterprise services training and promoting products and services to State agencies.
• Created a system for agencies to report project and financial data to the Legislative Finance Committee. This system includes a robust reporting module for legislators or the general public to track agency project statuses and spending.
• Implemented an enterprise-class, muli-tenancy Information Technology Service Management system that enables agencies to maintain independence of their own environments while benefiting from enterprise technology and processes.

State-of-the-Art

• Improved agency budgeting process experience through enhanced communications and training offerings of a new user-friendly system.
• Modernized the State’s telecommunication environment by installing over 7,000 Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones and moving 1,000 analog lines into the VoIP environment.
• Consolidated the State’s contact center that established a unified contact center with over 800 deployed agents.
• Adopted a statewide 9-1-1 plan and completed a statewide GIS assessment for Next Generation 9-1-1.
• Implemented Unified Digital Workspace (UDW). This shifts the focus from devices to people and provides employees their same computing environment whether they sit at their desk, work from home, or travel.
• Created an Information Technology Service Management request form and workflow to review and approve firewall requests This streamlines the end-to-end process, resulting in faster resolution times.

Capacity

• Enhanced the State’s private cloud to include efficient automation for virtual server management and disaster recovery services.
• Upgraded and consolidated the State’s network core that provides better load balancing, uptime, port density, and availability.

Capability

• Negotiated a reduction in the State’s cost-per-minute long distance service rates. This resulted in a one-time savings along with ongoing monthly savings.
• Awarded a new State network transport services contract that created ongoing savings and increased bandwidth speeds.