If enacted, the bill would rename the agency as the Department of Shared Administrative Services and make several updates to state technology oversight and responsibility. On Monday, following a floor session, it moved from the Senate to the House of Representatives.
The Department of Transformation and Shared Services was established in 2019 as part of former Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s effort to consolidate more than 42 state agencies into 15 departments. However, Secretary Leslie Fisken said on the department’s news feed, renaming it as the Department of Shared Administrative Services would be “more representative of what the department does.”
The bill, though, is not just cosmetic. SB 147 takes aim at several sections of Arkansas law around technology.
It would compel the Post-Prison Transfer Board to “administer” the “Safe Arkansas App,” a mobile application intended to provide real-time updates on people on parole or being considered for parole. The board could collaborate with the Division of Information Systems or external vendors to develop and maintain the app.
The proposed law would hone policy on the use of technology resources and cybersecurity by public entities. It would mandate the public entities — generally, those departments partially or wholly funded by taxpayers — create a technology resources policy that defines the “authorized use of technology resources for the public entity.”
The entities, which are defined to include the departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Corrections, would have to develop a cybersecurity policy for all their tech resources, based on State Cybersecurity Office standards and guidelines. They would have to create cybersecurity policies for all their tech resources, based on those state standards. The departments would, if the bill becomes law, also have to create an employee training program on the tech resources policy and cybersecurity policy. And a public entity's tech resources would, per the bill, be off limits for use in lobbying an elected official “on a personal opinion if the employee is not a registered lobbyist for the public entity.”
SB 147 would call on Fisken as secretary to assign a technology liaison to the Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation, to support the formation of IT policies in all school facilities. It would make the Arkansas Department of Education responsible for developing a cybersecurity policy for use by state educational institutions, subject to approval by the State Cybersecurity Office every other year; and have the department work with educational institutions to implement it, with disciplinary procedures for violations.
