State IT Management Initiative - Standardization and Centralization

Transcription

1 Standardization and Centralization Initiative (SACI) Enterprise IT Management Initiative - Change Management Project Initiation: March 29, 2013 Project Completion: June 1, 2014 Commissioner Peter Hastings State of NH

2 Executive Summary: Project Name: Standardization and Centralization Initiative (SACI) of State source data assets, intellectual property and mission critical data assets across the enterprise of State government. Enterprise IT Management Initiative - change management. Every State wants to save money for its citizens and stakeholders but saving money in State government can be a very challenging task. The fact that every agency in State government is basically its own separate entity makes this even more difficult. Initiatives of this size and scope can be complicated to implement if agencies don t understand the value and don t feel the need to cooperate or collaborate to achieve success and understand that the savings is in their best interest. In today s economy no one wants to spend any money to achieve any savings to begin with because they don t have the money to make any capital investments. Attempting to standardize any process, tool or initiative across the enterprise of State government is no easy task. The Standardization and Centralization Initiative (SACI) is no exception. This project standardizes the Software Configuration Management (SCM) tool across the entire enterprise of State government, secures, controls and centralizes all State source data assets, intellectual property and mission critical assets for State government and for disaster recovery purposes meeting the Federal COOP requirements as set forth by Homeland Security. To introduce a directive of this magnitude in my opinion speaks to the courage of Commissioner Peter Hastings for taking on such a challenging initiative across the enterprise of State government. You need a leader who can communicate effectively to the agency heads that there is value in this initiative that ultimately will lead to savings across the enterprise that they will experience. The State of NH will receive many benefits from this initiative across the enterprise and there have been many hurdles to achieving such a huge undertaking. This initiative reflects the understanding of Commissioner Peter Hastings to address enterprise wide level inconsistencies that cost the State of NH money and realize a cost savings instead. This initiative establishes a centralized virtualized repository environment for all State software assets. It standardizes the Software Configuration Management (SCM) tool, Defect Tracking tool and Formalizes production compiles across the enterprise. This initiative set in motion by Commissioner Peter Hastings at the State of NH is transforming State government software development activities across the enterprise of State government thereby streamlining processes and saving resources, time and money for the citizens of NH and the stakeholders of State government software development activities. I don't see any initiative like this taking place or being tackled anywhere else in the country on a State level and over the long term this will potentially save the State of NH perhaps millions. Page: 1

3 Description of Business Problem and Solution: Prior to the implementation of the SACI (Standardization and Centralization Initiative), State source data assets were spread across the enterprise of State government anywhere and everywhere. No one really knew where all the assets were located. State developers would leave for other opportunities and managers would hire a new developer and would not be able to point the developer to the latest greatest application source assets for a specific project. Some developers were storing assets on their local drives, others on share drives and no one knew where they were placed and yet others stored these valuable assets on CD s, DVD s which could be lost and local drives can crash and assets would be misplaced and lost. This results in a lot of State money expended to recreate these assets again. Let s just say a lot of State resources, time and money was wasted this way: Lost code, over written code, deleted files, no source code control with some agencies, restores of assets and many flavors of other types of source code control tools contained within a silo across the enterprise. Commissioner Peter Hastings realized quickly once becoming Commissioner that if he standardized and centralized all of the States assets whether they be source data assets of application source code, intellectual property related to applications that are supported inside and outside of State government and secured and controlled State mission critical assets in a centralized repository that this would save the State a lot of money. Commissioner Peter Hastings provided a directive to implement the Standardization and Centralization Initiative (SACI) and save money on activities related to software development and transform state government with more status accounting of software development activities across the enterprise of State government. There is visibility into software development activities that did not exist before this initiative. The direction was to place all existing physical servers housing software assets and software developers across the enterprise in the virtual environment on one server and on one standard tool across the enterprise to centralize the State source data assets, intellectual property and mission critical assets. There is a cost savings to the State with this initiative alone with fewer software configuration management (SCM) servers in technical support and electricity alone and a myriad of other savings I'll speak to later. This initiative would centralize and standardize the users, licenses, assets and support across the enterprise for software development activities. Page: 2

4 Significance of the Improvements to Government: Intellectual property is a valuable commodity and it needs to be secured and controlled. Standardizing tools and centralizing assets to reduce cost and streamline software development activities makes sense on so many levels (reduction in support, fewer physical SCM servers to maintain and support, less electricity, less software to install, fewer operating systems to maintain, fewer servers to back-up, easier to maintain SCM licenses, less of a learning curve for developers from one State agency to another on an SCM tool, more formalized development, more disciplined development, status accounting now available on software development activities, common code library can be shared to reuse code, future upgrades to the clients are easier, standard defect tracking being used which is centralized, etc.). All these savings add up and benefit state government in managing the cost of software development activities. In addition when all users are in a centralized virtual environment the cloud concept can now be applied from within the standardized Software Configuration Management (SCM) tool to reuse common functionality code across the enterprise. A common code library for common functionalities between agencies across the enterprise can be set up and code that could be shared, reused, understood can all be under the secure umbrella of SCM. Standardizing the Software Configuration Management tool allows groups to be created that have certain levels of access all the way down to a process or a file. It's easier to allow some teams or many teams the ability to browse this library of shared common code. It also educates other teams on how one team versus another might be developing common functionalities. It can save the State money rather than reinventing the wheel on common functionalities already written by another development team. This initiative saves the State resources, time and money on development activities: 1. All State source data assets are centralized - diminishes the overhead of physical support. 2. All processes are standardized by the use of one product to support multiple platforms. 3. Allows movement of a developer from one project to another with more flexibility. 4. Common functionality libraries can be set up for all development platforms (Visual Studio, PowerBuilder, Java, etc.) so that all developers can have access to reusable code under a SCM secure umbrella. Page: 3

5 5. Provides transparency to all managers with a view into a life cycle as to what developers are working on in any SCM State across the enterprise of State government. Many large organizations have too many varying methods, tools, processes and this creates silos of development, which is overall counterproductive to the whole. This makes it harder to not only know what the team(s) are doing or developing in or having access to or to interchange that skill set with another development team. When all developers are using the same tool they can easily be provided access to another project via the secure cloud of the standardized SCM tool and work any project and have a much smaller learning curve by not leaving the development environment but seeing a new project in their view in the SCM tool. When all users/developers are on one server that contains all the licenses for the tool and the assets are centralized and the SCM tool is standardized, the State can save money in various ways on activities related to software development and transform state government with more status accounting and visibility into software development not only for state developers but contractors as well. Below is a list of the benefits of this project to State Government: Standardization and Centralization Imitative (SACI): Benefits of the Project: 1. This project will standardize the States Software Configuration Management (SCM) Tool so that one product is being used by all agencies and this will save the State, time, money and resources by having one tool across the enterprise to support. 2. Provides the State with a smaller learning curve from software development team to software development team across the enterprise and allows software developers to save time by not learning a different tool from agency to agency. This allows for more focus on software development activities for application development. 3. Allows for Cloud software development to occur in a secure umbrella of SCM and allows for reuse of source code to save the State time, money and ultimately resources on software development activities. Prevents reinventing the wheel on common functionalities. 4. Allows for software developers to be interchanged between agencies more easily without the need to learn a new SCM tool for software configuration management activities. 5. Precludes lost source code (source data assets, intellectual property, mission critical assets) from agency to agency that saves the State time, money and resources over the long term. Page: 4

6 Benefits of the Project - Continued: 6. This will save the State money on electricity as well because all software developers will be on one virtual server versus the three physical servers that are being used today. Three physical servers will be decommissioned. 7. This will save the State money in terms of manpower as well with only one virtual server to maintain and back-up and one operating system to maintain and support rather than three. 8. Saves the State money with all State data assets, intellectual property and mission critical assets centrally located rather than spread out all over the place across the enterprise. 9. This methodology allows for better control of disaster recovery to meet Federal COOP requirements across the enterprise when it concerns State source data assets and intellectual property. 10. This allows State managers more visibility into software development activities and allows for better time management of these resources. 11. Standardize Defect Tracking for all State agencies so that one tool is used across the enterprise for all reporting against application development. This centralizes reporting. 12. Standardize production compilations so that compilations and debugging issues are minimized across the enterprise for software development activities. 13. When contractors use our standardized tool we have greater insight into their software development activities and at least have the assets secured and controlled within State Government. 14. When contractors use our standardized tool and house the State assets within our infrastructure it allows State software developers to shadow contractors and parallel the contractors work so that when the contract is complete State staff can sustain the application. 15. Harvest SCM integrates with all the software development platforms that we use here at the State today. So, one tool rather than a myriad of tools can perform the task of SCM and this saves the State time and money with only one tool to support across the enterprise and it takes only two people to support the entire infrastructure across the enterprise. Page: 5

7 The final result is one virtual software development server with users and one terabyte of data assets, which would include intellectual property of various types (application code - VS, PB, Java, docs, etc., or Oracle code, SQL code, Access, etc.) and mission-critical assets. What will have been achieved across the enterprise: 1. Centralized State Data Assets Across the Enterprise of State Government 2. Centralized Data Asset Repositories 3. Standardize Software Configuration Management (SCM) Tool 4. Standardize Application Compiler - OpenMake 5. Standardize Defect Tracking System 6. Created Common Code Library for Common Functionalities 7. Provide Status Accounting and Auditing of SCM projects 8 Provide IT Managers and the Commissioner Visibility into Software Development Activities Across the Enterprise of State Government It is difficult to measure these savings in terms of real dollars but the savings can be measured by the streamlining of software development activities across the enterprise. The increased efficiency and quality improvements as well as a reduction of errors and or duplicative efforts are the real payback to this initiative. Page: 6