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January 23, 2012 By Steve Towns
David Taylor became CIO of Florida and executive director of the state’s Agency for Enterprise Information Technology in 2008. One of his first tasks was to lead a state-mandated consolidation of email for executive branch agencies, which at the time operated more than 30 separate systems. Migration to the enterprise email system was scheduled to start in late 2011.
We put together work groups of the customer agency participants to do a study, and then we told the Legislature that we saw consolidation as an opportunity to save some money. We took the same approach to the procurement. Agencies that would be the customers participated in designing the business requirements and the procurement instrument.
The best price and value was an Exchange 2010 system — a private cloud solution. The awardee was ACS, and Microsoft is a subcontractor. They will run it in an ACS data center in Florida using their staff in a private-cage environment. All state employees are doing is managing the contract. The project is roughly 115,000 Exchange mailboxes to start; we expect cities and counties to join within the next couple of years. The contract also was written so other states can join.
Since the Legislature didn’t provide an exemption for public safety, they had to be included. That changed the business requirements dramatically. The system had to be architected to meet their security concerns. We needed to provide a system that [Criminal Justice Information Services]-type data could live in for years. That involves the technical aspect, and also background checks of all [vendor] employees.
Our initial estimate is that this will save about $2 million a year over the seven-year contract. That won’t save the state budget, but it’s significant. Putting everyone on the same platform also means all of the state’s archives will be in a central repository, which will make us better at responding to legal discovery or public records requests.
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Interesting to know what happens to existing emails located on PST files, wre they also moved to the Exchange mailboxes? http://www.datamills.com
Check your facts on this article. This project is dead because of faulty cost calculations and lack of expertise in the implementation. In addition, Taylor and his agency have been deleted by the Florida legislature. There is a new agency, but he has not been moved to it and cannot be in charge because he does not qualify. Florida finally realized its mistake!
Although I do believe at the time this article was published, Mr. Taylor was aware that the Message Florida enterprise e-mail project might be discontinued, I don't necessarily agree with Sasha Vinga's spin on what's going on. Yes, the Florida Legislature is/was not convinced that the orginal cost calculations for this project were accurate. I'm not at all sure that the Legislature expressed concern about the expertise the vendor brought to the table for migrating the State's agencies to the enterprise cloud-based solution. After all, ACS won the bid and the contract and I can't imagine that the State's negotiation team for this project overlooked this part. The State agencies participated in designing the business requirements, scope of services, and the procurement instrument for this project. The best way to get factual information about the possible discontinuance of the project is to read the proposed legislation that contains proviso language addressing the Florida Legislature's intent to change the law. There's both a Senate and House bill that contain similar language. Also, it's proposed in HB1215 and SB1498 that the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology (AEIT) be abolished and specified personnel, functions, etc., be transferred to the Agency for State Technology. Currently, this agency doesn't exist; however, there is language in the legislative bills that specify its creation. The language in both bills is essentially the same, almost verbatim. It's also not known by the general public if David Taylor will or won't be transferred to the new agency. Just know that nothing is final until the Governor signs the proposed changes into law. He could, however, allow it to become law by defacto meaning, he won't sign it all and it will become law just the same. Most of all and as a citizen of the State of Florida, it's very important to know the empirical facts! The best way to get the facts is to contact the legislators in your district!
So who is the State of Florida CIO oor CISO....looks like david and Mike Russo went to work at some of the prominent agencies....Does this mean there is no single oversite or anyone looking to consolidate services? very confused...
Microsoft Faces Whistleblower Lawsuit A former employee of Microsoft is suing the software giant for violating the state's Whistleblower Protection Act. WLRN-Miami Herald's Marva Hinton reports the plaintiff, Myrna Pinto, was responsible for governmental accounts in South Florida. http://tunein.com/topic/?topicId=39004050