In January of 2008, Governor Kaine appointed Ms. Peggy Feldmann to the position of Chief Applications Officer (CAO). This appointment was to both address the findings contained within the Auditor of Public Accounts report on IT Governance and to ensure our continued excellence within the area of information technology management. The office of the CAO provides the Commonwealth of Virginia with an improved approach to managing IT governance and our business portfolio.

Recognizing the current budget constraints, and striving to leverage existing Commonwealth resources, the Governor requested the Information Technology\Investment Board (ITIB) assist in developing an operational plan to improve oversight and management of IT governance and portfolio management.

Working together, the Chief Information Office (CIO) and CAO were able to develop an operational plan to better align responsibilities and optimize management, efficiency and productivity from our information technology investments. The efforts will better align the Commonwealth’s business model and IT strategy, improve maintenance and operations planning, enhance enterprise application efforts, create data standards, increase transparency in our return on investment, and provide a comprehensive IT governance model for managing all the application resources of the Commonwealth.

Responsibilities of the Chief Applications Officer include:

Application Planning and Management

The CAO will develop an application governance model.

Data Standards

The CAO is charged to improve standardization of data across our administrative systems by developing key data standards.

Application Portfolio

The CAO is responsible for extending the Commonwealth’s portfolio to include current applications used to conduct state business.

IT Budget Request Detail

The CAO will provide funding recommendations, to include support for statewide initiatives.

IT Management for Agencies

The CAO will develop support strategies to assist agencies where beneficial to government and the citizen.

Enterprise Application Opportunities

The CAO will leverage the Virginia Enterprise Applications Program (VEAP) to continue identification and exploitation of enterprise solutions which span agency boundaries.

Below are the initiative details that can be found on this page:

• Application Portfolio
• Strategic Business Application Planning
• Data Standards
• Financial Management (FMS)
• Business Intelligence Initiative (BI)
• Performance Budgeting (PB)
• Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
• Human Resource Management (HRMS)
• Other Projects

Application Portfolio

The purpose of this initiative is to develop a comprehensive inventory of Commonwealth application investments.  Projects under development are currently tracked in ProSight, however, the Commonwealth lacks visibility of deployed applications, and our ongoing investments into those applications. Establishing a portfolio of business applications will support development of the Enterprise Architecture, provide a “library” of existing solutions available to others, and possibly identify common business needs.

This initiative is comprised of two phases.  Phase one is the inventory of existing applications and phase two is the larger enterprise architecture initiative.  During Phase I, agencies will be asked to complete a survey of their existing applications.  The survey is comprised of 32 questions, focused on four areas; business, information, application and technology.

For more information on this initiative, please contact Dan Boersma daniel.boersma@veap.virginia.gov (804) 786-0516

Strategic Business Application Planning

The purpose of this initiative is to develop a “TO-BE” vision for our future applications environment, and analyze the current governance model.   Strategic planning is the formal consideration of an organization's future course.  While there are many approaches to strategic planning, it is typically a three-step process:

1. Situation - evaluate the current situation and how it came about.
2. Target - define goals and/or objectives (sometimes called ideal state)
3. Path - map a possible route to the goals/objectives

This initiative will document for the Executive Branch how the Commonwealth currently plans for and governs enterprise and shared service business applications today (AS-IS), the roles, responsibilities and linkage of key participants (e.g. COVF, ITIB, CAO, CIO, ITIM CC, DPB, Secretariats, Agencies) and processes (e.g. Governor’s Objectives, ITSP, RTIP, Agency Strategic Plans, budget, federal requirements), what the Commonwealth should strive to achieve (TO-BE vision), recommend how the Commonwealth should plan for and govern business (both enterprise and shared service) applications tomorrow (TO-BE governance) and what should be next steps toward achieving the TO-BE vision. 

Documents:

DRAFT Commonwealth of Virginia Strategic Plan for Applications(PDF, 2.8MB)

For more information on this initiative, please contact Will Goldschmidt will.goldschmidt@veap.virginia.gov (804) 786-0519

Data Standards

The purpose of this initiative is to establish enterprise data standards for all the data entities that are shared across agencies. The executive branch central agencies establishing these standards are as follows: Department of General Services (DGS), Department of Treasury (TRS), Department of Human Resource Management (DHRM), Department of Planning and Budget (DPB), and the Department of Accounts (DOA).

The deliverables outlined for the first phase support the Virginia Department of Transportation's (VDOT) initiative to modernize their current financial management system and establish a new enterprise base financial system for the Department of Accounts.

VEAP is leading the central agency resources to develop a Data Management Program which will support the development and ongoing management of data standards. The objectives for the Data Management Program are as follows:

• Define and publish enterprise data requirements for all COV common and sharable data entities (such as Vendor, Employee, and Citizen).
• Establish data management policies, standards, procedures and recommended practices to be used by all enterprise initiatives.
• Define data governance roles and responsibilities, and identify key resources to manage the execution of the Data Management Program.
• Create a process infrastructure of workflows and tools to support the resources performing data management activities.
• Create an education program in support of data management roles.

Data Management Program - (Final Plan, PDF Document)

Data Standardization Process - (Draft, PDF Document)

Enterprise Data Model (EDM) - Draft

• Chart of Accounts Sub-Model
• Vendor Sub-Model - Model Overview (MS Word)
•  Purchase Order Sub-Model
•  Employee Sub-Model
• Business One Stop Sub-Model

Commonwealth Data Strategy

From March - June 2009, a work group formed by the ITIM Customer Council, drafted a data strategy for the Commonwealth. This draft strategy is being finalized and will be shared with a broader audience across the Commonwealth during August and September 2009.

Commonwealth Data Strategy - (Draft, PDF Document)

For more information on data management initiatives, please contact:

Nadine Hoffman
Data Management
nadine.hoffman@vita.virginia.gov
(804) 786-0543

Financial Management

The program has coordinated with Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) on a financial management system; to include a “base” central financial system to replace the current, outdated system, CARS. The capability will provide with a new, maintainable financial management system for VDOT while providing an expandable “base” system for the Commonwealth. VDOT requested, and was granted, development approval of the project at the April 2008 ITIB meeting. Partnering with a lead agency (usually a large agency) has been a successful approach for the VEAP program to continue moving enterprise projects forward during these difficult budget years.

Business Intelligence Initiative

The Business Intelligence Initiative (BII) is targeting providing a common capability for agencies to generate reports, dashboards, and “unlock” the knowledge contained within their current data. In January 2008, VITA Supply Chain Management (SCM), working with VEAP and agency representatives, issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a toolset to produce business intelligence information. On July 23rd 2008, SCM awarded a contract to supplier LogiXML. Preparations continue for agency involvement by the BII team. A key part of the initiative is the establishing of a Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) that enables the Commonwealth to implement the new tools efficiently and effectively. The BII team held a BI Summit meeting on June 25th, 2008 where technical and functional agency representatives began charting the future course for this initiative. The BII team is currently facilitating BICC Strategy and Preliminary planning workshops. In addition, the team is exploring options to develop and publish a policy that establishes the new BI toolset as a standard and is working to establish an environment suitable for agency BI deployments with procured toolset. Read More >>>

Performance Budgeting

The Performance Budgeting (PB) project team issued a request for proposals in December, 2008 and is currently evaluating vendor responses. The proposed Performance Budgeting system will replace the current budget and strategic planning systems in use by the Commonwealth with an integrated Performance Budgeting system with enhanced functionality. The Performance Budgeting team expects to issue an award by July, 2009 and begin implementation in August/September. Read More >>>

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

The Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Initiative is currently focused on the establishment of an ECM Shared Services platform. ECM Shared Services will allow smaller to medium-sized agencies that cannot justify their own ECM solution or larger agencies wishing to pilot ECM in a limited fashion to take advantage of this offering. An ECM Working Group comprised of representatives from Commonwealth agencies and localities is designing the model for the Shared Services offering. The platform will be based on the IBM FileNet P8 solution, which was selected as the Commonwealth standard in 2007. In addition, VEAP is working towards establishing an ECM Center of Excellence and a collaborative, advisory-based governance model. Read More >>>

Human Resources

The VEAP team in cooperation with the Department of Human Resource Management (DHRM) is evaluating options for increasing our enterprise HR capability. Options being considered include build, buy, modernize existing applications and Software as a Service (SaaS).

Other Initiatives

VEAP is coordinating and/or evaluating numerous initiatives within the Executive branch to determine when an enterprise solution will enhance numerous agencies’ capabilities, not just one agency’s capability. Some initiatives the program has been evaluating include e-Signature, case management tools, “software as a service” implementations. VEAP continues to provide project management guidance for the Department of Business Assistance’s Business One Stop project.

On May 12, Governor Kaine announced the launch of Business One-Stop.

Read the press release