MN.IT Services

Applications

Statewide Outcome(s):

Applications supports the following statewide outcome(s).

Efficient and accountable government services.

Sustainable options to safely move people, goods, services and information.

This program also supports all of the remaining state outcomes including health, education, employment, public safety, stable families, and natural resources by managing the applications that run agency programs.

Context:

This budget activity seeks to:

·        Maximize the use of web based processes to allow citizens to efficiently transact business with government.

·        Facilitate the State’s ability to uphold the law and carry out statutory obligations.

·        Make government more transparent through readily available data and results oriented measurements.

·        Provide technologies that enable collaboration among the government entities that serve the same clients and address the same issues.

·        Foster and enable data driven decision making; be proactive in identifying opportunities for the State to improve knowledge sharing and integrated services.

·        Enable the state workforce to conduct business “anytime anywhere” through effective technologies and policies.

·        Provide appropriate training tools that assist the State’s efforts to enhance and improve leadership skills in the state workforce.

·        Provide technology solutions for back office and business process improvements that result in delivering government services to citizens faster and more effectively.

·        Manage technology investments in a manner that minimizes costs and generates savings dollars for investments in the future.

·        Provide tools and develop processes that speed up and reduce the complexity of IT purchasing.

·        Continue development of shared processes to minimize the risk and impact of adverse security events.

Application services are funded through chargeback, general appropriation, special revenue funds and grants.

Strategies:

The overall strategies and objectives for application development come from the 2012 Minnesota IT Master Plan http://mn.gov/oet/images/Master_Plan_2012.pdf.They include:

·        MN.IT Services manages all back office and citizen facing applications and systems required by state agencies to meet their program objectives.

·        Examples of application service categories are application development, application management, data management, database administration, and middleware administration.

·        MN.IT’s application services are managed through Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with each agency that set forth agreed upon business requirements and service levels. The state currently manages more than 2000 individual applications in the executive branch at the annual cost of $159 million.

·        The upcoming optimization phase of IT consolidation will review opportunities to share or design systems that can simplify the environment and reduce the number overall.

·        Several technological and economic factors are driving the potential for further business process improvements and cost reduction including the evolution of cloud computing and virtualization, data center consolidation, social media, mobile devices, increases in bandwidth, business intelligence/analytics, and savings made possible through enterprise agreements.

The strategies outlined above support the statewide outcome of providing ‘efficient and accountable government services’ and ‘sustainable options to safely move…information’ and were developed with input from the State Chief Information Officer (CIO), MN.IT Services leadership and staff, the Governor’s Office, the legislature, MN.IT governance bodies, including the Technology Advisory Committee (TAC), and agency business leadership. MN.IT develops and maintains individual applications based on the business needs and requirements of its agency customers, and in consultation with business leadership.

Results:

Applications are successful when they enable state agencies to deliver services in an efficient and cost effective manner and citizens are satisfied with the services they receive from the State in return for their tax dollar investment.

MN.IT Services measures its success through progress towards minimizing redundancy and complexity in its applications environment. Recent examples include: development of a shared e-licensing system for professional licenses; migration to a single, cloud based email and collaboration toolset for all 30,000 state employees; and advantageous enterprise licensing agreements such as Microsoft Select and BMC Remedy.

Performance Measures Notes:

1.      The current Digital State Survey measure was issued in October 2012, and the previous measure represents the grade issued in 2010.

2.      The number of applications shared by more than one agency is a new performance measurement. Data collection will commence during FY 2013, most likely as part of the Enterprise IT Portfolio Report, and is expected to be available for reporting during FY 2014.

3.      The number of enterprise-wide software licenses is as follows: previous (one-2009); current (four-September 2012).

4.      The percent of applications adhering to state architecture standards is a new performance measurement. Data collection will begin during FY 2013 and is expected to be available for reporting during FY 2014.