Results tagged “DIS” from FastGov: Where Government is Going

Microsoft's new Bing decision engine is now powering the search function on the Washington state portal, Access Washington.

In a statement released today, Jim Albert, Deputy Director of Operations at the Washington State Department of Information Services (DIS), said "Adding Bing to Access Washington will improve the relevancy of search results on the portal, allowing users to find the information they are looking for faster and with greater accuracy." The statement also says the change to Bing comes "an no additional cost to Washington taxpayers."

The announcement comes the same week that Microsoft and Yahoo! unveiled plans to join forces and use Bing to take on search giant Google.  Indeed, Google and its search appliance enjoy high adoption even among state portals in the tricky business of getting search right.

For its part, Washington state was early to use a third party to create a better search experience.  It originally contracted with the parent company of ask.com to allow users to get answers to questions asked in everyday, natural language, as well as traditional keyword searching.  As a cousin to AskJeeves, the only state named for an individual named its search function AskGeorge in honor of its namesake president.

In an unrelated conversation last night, newly appointed state CIO and DIS director Tony Tortorice told me, "the governor is serious about government reform and we're going to get it done."  That apparently includes getting it done in big ways -- implementing enterprise shared services and building a new $300 million data center -- and in smaller ways, like going bing.

After a four month search, the state of Washington has named a new state CIO.  The word came today from the governor's office. The full text follows:

Gov. Chris Gregoire today named Tony Tortorice, a California Information Technology executive with more than 25 years of IT experience in both the private and public sectors, to head Washington's Department of Information Services.

"Tony brings the unique background and wealth of experience required to be successful in this role," Gregoire said. "Our state, like any other business, has to make technological advances if we're going to be successful. I am confident that Tony's strong technology experience will greatly benefit Washington as we develop strategies to streamline state government - which will better serve our communities while improving our bottom line." 

The Legislature created DIS in 1987 to make government information and services more available, accessible and affordable. The agency now employs nearly 450 workers who provide more than 100 technology services. The agency also provides technology leadership and guidance to government agencies across the state.  

"Information technology has tremendous potential to improve government's services to citizens. I came to work for Governor Gregoire because of her commitment to tap that potential," said Tortorice.

A California resident for the past 30 years, Tortorice, 57, is the chief information officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest public K-12 school system. There, he led the recovery of a troubled HR/Payroll implementation. Tortorice was also the senior IT executive for the Los Angeles Community College District, the largest system of community colleges in the nation. Before working with the community college system, he was a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Prior to beginning a doctorate program in public administration at the University of Southern California, Tortorice served in the U.S. Navy, where he started his career in IT by installing his command's first word processing system. Tortorice holds a master's degree in systems management from USC, and a bachelor's degree in history from the University of State of New York.

"Tony Tortorice will be an outstanding Chief Information Officer for the State of Washington," said Scott Griffin, former chief information officer at Boeing who served on the interview panel. "He comes to the job with a wealth of technology and public service experience, and is aligned with Governor Gregoire's priorities for our state. Tony's leadership and experience will be a great asset as we move our state forward in the information age."

Gregoire commended DIS Interim Director Jim Albert, who has led the agency since January, when former Director Gary Robinson retired from state service.

"I want to thank Jim for his leadership at DIS. I know it will be an easy transition thanks to Jim's commitment and dedication to the agency," Gregoire said.

Tortorice will begin at DIS July 1, where he will earn an annual salary of $147,000.

Tortorice comes to the role just as the Administration won legislative approval to build a new data center, for which DIS will be the general contractor. He also faces the challenge of working on relationships with customer agencies that have become strained over time as DIS repositioned itself from being a discretionary service provider to a control agency.

After a long and often emotional hearing on a separate bill about same sex benefits, a characteristically brusque committee chair Darlene Fairley (D 32nd District) told the people who had stayed to testify on Senate Bill 5256 that she only wanted to hear from three of them due to the lateness of the hour.

At issue, the proposed elimination of the Washington State Department of Information Services (DIS).  Fairley summarized the sponsor's motivation for closing DIS as "gathering up money for his social services" although committee staff said the benefits or costs of such a move were either "indeterminate" or "over $360,000" depending on how you read the as yet incomplete fiscal notes.

As for choosing only three people to testify off a long list of those who had signed in as "opposed" to the bill, Fairley acerbically concluded, "I know why you're opposed ... because you go away."

With that as his introduction, Interim DIS Director Jim Albert, appointed just over a month ago, reminded the flagging committee members of how his agency provided a wide range of technology goods and services to some 600 public entities in the state that would have to find replacement providers -- possibly at a higher cost.  Albert said that one in five state residents receive services from or through DIS, whether that is a payroll or benefits check, electronic funds transfer or eligibility letters -- not to mention the 700,000 unique visitors who visited the state portal for information during the December storms.

With Albert's two minutes up, Department of Personnel CIO Steve Young itemized the DIS provided services on which his agency relied -- e-mail, security, secure file transfer and server hosting among them.

Washington Federation of Labor Lobbyist Alia Griffing was last up, saying simply that the Federation had 349 members at DIS and the reasons for the Federation's opposition were "self evident."

But by themselves, evidently not enough.

The heart of Senate Bill 5256, introduced in the Washington State legislature, is the repeal of  the enabling statute for the state Department of Information Services (RCW 43.105).  With its repeal, the agency would go out of business on January 1, 2010.

Strangely, the digest written by legislative staff says the bill "eliminates the department of social and health services' information system services division and prohibits maintaining a similar division in the future."  Indeed, it does that but the accompanying Senate Bill Report acknowledges the wider scope, summarizing the bill in a singe sentence, "The Department of Information Services is eliminated."

Except for a provision that would transfer any balances in the DIS revolving fund to the general fund, the bill is silent on government operations without DIS.  Who if anyone would assume responsibility for the third largest data center in the northwest, the statewide network and a big basket of IT related goods and services?  Put another way, would the 130 or more public agencies that are DIS customers be left to find new providers by themselves?  Those agencies that provided fiscal notes on the bill concluded that the impact of the bill would be "Non-zero but indeterminate cost and/or savings."

When Senator Jim Hargrove (D - 24th Legislative District) dropped the bill on January 19, the conventional wisdom was that it was, to use a popular euphemism in Olympia, a "conversation starter." 

There was also a sense that, if for no other reason than the massive volume of legislation with which the Senate was dealing, the bill was not likely to get a hearing.  So much for conventional wisdom.  SB5256 is scheduled for a hearing this afternoon at 3:30PM before the Senate Committee on Government Operations.  The hearing is scheduled to be carried live on TVW, the state level C-SPAN service.