Approved:       January 23, 2007        

Date

MINUTES OF THE HOUSE GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE

The meeting was called to order by Chairman Jim Morrison at 3:32 P.M. on January 18, 2007,, in Room 526-S of the Capitol.

All members were present.

Committee staff present:

Mary Galligan, Kansas Legislative Research

Tatiana Lin, Kansas Legislative Research

Renae Jefferies, Office of Revisor of Statutes

Gary Deeter, Committee Assistant

Conferees appearing before the committee:

Denise Moore, Director, Division of Information Systems and Communications

Others attending:

Nelson Krueger, invited guest

The Chair referenced Attachment 1, a proposal by Fort Hays State University to implement an Information Assurance program through its Information Networking and Telecommunications Department, a proposal with an estimated cost of $532,536.40. Members were encouraged to read the proposal and be prepared to question the principals of the proposal at the Committee meeting on Wednesday, January 24.

Members reconvened at the Landon State Office Building, Room 753-S, for a presentation by Denise Moore, Director of DISC (Division of Information Systems and Communications).

Ms. Moore reviewed the functions of DISC, explaining the operation of the seven bureaus and outlining a number of DISC initiatives (Attachment 2). She noted the effect of 1998's SB 5, which created a Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO) for each branch of Kansas government as well as a Kansas Information Technology Office (KITO) at DISC. She provided Attachment 3 to illustrate the agency project plan approval process.

Ms. Moore commented on the involvement of the Kansas Board of Regents in statewide Information Technology (IT) activities, noting the Board’s participation in IT governance: ITEC (Information Technology Executive Council), ITAB (IT Advisory Board), GIS Data Access and Support Center (Geographical Information Systems), and KTARB (Kansas Technical Architecture Review Board); Regents also cooperate in strategic sourcing, the KAN-Ed Network, IT Security, and project management (Attachment 4). Conversely, she said, the Executive Branch is involved in several Regents activities. Answering questions, Ms. Moore said KITO monitors Regents projects as well as those at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She replied that DISC has one mainframe and that some of the Regents institutions have mainframes. She said she would provide a list of the state’s mainframes and servers (see later attachment). She responded that all state agencies are on the fiber-optic backbone, some through Kansas Department of Transportation’s fiber, and some through agreements with cable networks for local connectivity. Responding to another question, she said the Regents’ payroll system could possibility be integrated with the state’s financial management system and that a feasibility study is being completed by the Kansas Department of Administration regarding a new statewide financial management system. She responded to a follow-up question, acknowledging that the Regents could also create a single unified payroll system rather than the present system of separate payroll systems for each university. She distributed Attachment 5 to illustrate the Regents’ use of SHARP (Statewide Human Resources and Reporting and Payroll); she added further documentation with a letter to the Joint Committee on Information Technology regarding integrating the Regents various payroll systems with SHARP (Attachment 6).

Members posed several questions regarding the integration of Regents IT with other state agency IT systems. Ms. Moore said DISC provides the SHARP interface for the Regents, but that Regents institutions have separate financial management systems, student systems, and alumni systems. She replied to a question that the Strategic Information Management Plan addresses future IT business architecture, a plan which has input from ITEC, the CITOs, and the Regents. She acknowledged that presently many agencies have separate IT platforms which cannot communicate with other agency platforms, a significant problem which she described as “lots of data and no information.” She replied to another question that because the Regents have block-grant funding, they tend to be more independent than other state agencies.

Ms. Moore later supplied Attachment 7 to document the number of data-center servers.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:50 p.m. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, January 22, 2007, in Room 526-S.