Georgia Technology Authority (GTA) Update


AnchorVolume 6, Issue No. 1                                                                                               January 8, 2014 
New angles on familiar issues for a new year

 

 

Happy New Year!  At GTA we welcome 2014 with our to-do list in hand.  I am confident we'll soon be checking off some items that will result in better service and greater efficiencies for the agencies we serve.
 

In the GETS arena, improving the quality of service tops the list.  As we near completion of the state's IT transformation, we and our service providers are redoubling our efforts to see that day-to-day service delivery does not suffer.

 

Providing you with the information and tools you need also ranks high for 2014.  GTA will contract for assistance to help you better manage your consumption of GETS services. During the first quarter of the year, the mainframe tuning team will work with agencies on reducing their bills.  New cloud services are on the horizon - we plan to begin offering Office 365 by the end of the first quarter and a cloud storage solution by the third quarter.

 

This year should see all but the last mile or so of the IT transformation.  We expect it to be substantially complete by the end of 2014.

 

In addition, we will continue to offer educational opportunities for agencies about key business areas and technology solutions.  Security will gain particular focus as we aim to ensure that all high-impact IT systems have the required security plans in place.

 

Your partnership is important to us and critical to the progress we will make together this year.  In fact, we will be making governance changes to give agencies a larger role in decision making for the GETS program.

 

Thank you for your ongoing support.

 

  

Calvin Rhodes

State Chief Information Officer

GTA Executive Director

 

 

 
GETS service delivery model evolves as IT needs evolve
 

Through nearly five years of the GETS program, GTA and customer agencies have learned much about how the state's IT needs can most effectively be met.  Taking into account those many lessons, GTA leaders discussed themes of an ongoing evolution of the GETS delivery model at a December meeting with GETS agency CIOs.

 

For IT service delivery, evolving means capitalizing on what we've learned collectively to strengthen the program.

 

Specific tactics will be weighed and discussed throughout 2014 and beyond, all woven around a goal of taking fullest advantage of the enterprise approach to IT services Georgia adopted with the GETS program.  Efforts to ensure smoother integration of services, end to end, will be emphasized.  Another priority -- getting fullest benefit for the state from our service provider partners.  Also, developing an ability to innovate more quickly and respond more nimbly to ever-changing IT needs.  And all pursued within the budget realities Georgia agencies face.

 

GTA leaders affirmed the importance of careful collaboration with GETS agencies on program refinements and will continue working with them to strengthen GETS.

 

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For an ounce of prevention,
IT options may hold the cure

 

Waiting in lines to get a driver's license or renew a license is no one's idea of a good time.  Worse still, having a network outage interfere with your transaction and extend your wait, or even send you away empty-handed.


The Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) upgraded technology recently at its Calhoun (Gordon County) customer service center to help eliminate the headaches such outages can bring customers at that location.  In partnership with GTA and AT&T, DDS installed a secure wireless backup option at Calhoun allowing them to automatically switch over and continue regular operations should an outage occur with the main network.  The site can continue to conduct transactions uninterrupted and serve the needs of customers.
 

Even as it continues to work to minimize network outages, GTA is pleased to partner with state agencies on introducing solutions like this one.  When it can help agencies achieve their missions, GTA makes inroads toward its own mission.

 

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Website usability means never having to say, "Just forget it"

 

You don't want visitors to your website jumping ship because they're struggling to find information they need from you.  Nobody wins if it comes to that.

 

GTA's GeorgiaGov Interactive team can help you keep your customers onboard and out of the soup with websites that are quick and easy to navigate. That's the emphasis of the January 15th GOVTalks session.  This second round of GeorgiaGov's infomational series will give guidance for improving your websites' usability -- key to a positive site experience.

 

The free half-day workshop introduces you to tools for identifying usability challenges on your websites and steps you through hands-on usability testing of live sites. Register via this link.

 

Each quarter the GeorgiaGov Interactive team will bring you a new topic in web trends and technology, with a broader goal of helping you make it easy for Georgians to find the information and services they need from their state government.

 

 

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Briefly...

  • Within the server consolidation (SCON) portion of the state's ongoing IT transformation, aggressive target dates for building new servers will be fast approaching in 2014. IBM continues its determined work of building and delivering new servers to agencies for subsequent application loading and testing.  With an overall goal of substantially completing transformation this year, GTA and IBM are refining timelines for the SCON project and all remaining transformation work (e.g. e-mail upgrades, file services upgrades).  Updated schedules will be shared with GETS agencies for consideration and incorporation of agency factors.

    

 
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We welcome your comments about service delivery, the state's IT transformation and related topics.

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