House Status:
Senate Status:
Senate Status:
Minutes for HB2359 - Committee on Government, Technology and Security
Short Title
Creating the Kansas information technology enterprise agency.
Minutes Content for Wed, Feb 15, 2017
The Chairman opened the hearing on HB2359.
Jenna Moyer, Assistant Revisor, briefed the Committee on the provisions of the bill (Attachment 1). She reviewed each section noting key elements of each one. The bill changes the Office of Information Technology Services (OITS) to the Kansas Information Technology Enterprise (KITE), shifts administrative and funding authority for Information Technology (IT) from executive branch agencies to the Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO), and adds the ability for the chief Information Technology Architect position to be filled by a committee. Answering questions, Ms. Moyer replied that the bill applied only to Executive-Branch agencies, which exempts elected office agencies, including the Secretary of State, the Attorney General's office, and Insurance Department; the Regents institutions are also exempted, but any exempt agency may opt to receive these IT services for a negotiated rate.
Phil Wittmer, Executive CITO, testified as a proponent for the bill (Attachment 2). He explained that the bill makes KITE into an agency that becomes a service-model broker, obtaining IT services for all other Executive-Branch agencies. It also stabilized funding and completes the IT recommendations from the Alvarez and Marstall efficiency study. He noted that funding initially will be neutral, but over time $9-14 million in savings should be achieved.
Mr. Wittmer fielded a number of questions:
The bill creates a significant cultural shift for agencies; however, by forming four working groups that will address the various concerns of the agencies, a cooperative and collaborative structure can be established. All non-Executive-Branch agencies may elect whether or not to become a part of KITE. The bill provides one year to accommodate funding; the plan proposed that each agency budget will allocate a certain percentage to KITE. Oversight can be illustrated by the organizational chart. The shaded areas are Executive-Branch agencies (Attachment 3).
Oversight for KITE will be provided by the Joint Committee on Information Technology and, for IT policy, by the Information Technology Executive Committee. The House Government, Technology and Security Committee may also be tasked with oversight. Initial implementation may require additional funding, since past neglect of IT issues needs to be addressed. Governance costs will remain stable, but upgrades and security measures will increase costs. One cost savings will be the plan to migrate agencies' IT to hybrid Cloud resources using a third-party vendor.
KITE will request $10 million for cybersecurity.
Eric Sweden, speaking as a neutral conferee and representing the National Association of CITOs, commented on national trends, such as the consolidation of IT services (Attachment 4). He noted the changing role of Chief Information Officers and the shift of IT priorities over the past years. He said that IT is moving toward an enterprise base that widens the range of IT focus to include governance, leadership, and organizational structure. He cited one example: presently 67% of state agencies outsource services.
The Chair closed the hearing on HB2359.
