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Virginia’s information technology infrastructure sourcing program (ITISP) has received a national award for innovation.

The ITISP has been named a winner in the National Association of State Chief Administrators (NASCA) Innovation in State Government competition. The win came in the infrastructure category.

“This program moved the Commonwealth’s information technology (IT) from a long-term contract with one large supplier for all infrastructure services for the executive branch of state government to a new multisupplier environment,” said Secretary of Administration Keyanna Conner.

“Now, in just three short years, ITISP has been completed and the new multisupplier environment is in place. In the first year alone, we will offer 40 new services to agencies. These exciting new services will be more dependable and secure,” said Secretary Conner. “Additionally, Virginia became the first state in the nation to fully deploy a multisupplier model for IT infrastructure services.”

Chief Information Officer of the Commonwealth Nelson Moe, who serves as agency head at the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA), said the Commonwealth takes advantage of having a central, consolidated approach to IT services. “VITA is charged with providing IT infrastructure services to all 63 executive branch agencies, including agencies such as motor vehicles, transportation, corrections, health and social services,” he said. VITA oversees the multisourced environment and suppliers.

“Taking this innovative step was successful because of the involvement and support of Governor Ralph Northam and former Governor Terry McAuliffe and their administrations, the Virginia General Assembly and executive branch agencies,” said CIO Moe. He noted that both governors and their administrations provided support, including staffing and financing that ensured success of the project.

“Agency representatives provided significant input,” he said. “They responded when queried about how to transform the infrastructure model, served on committees drafting requests for proposals and reviewing those submissions from suppliers, and provided advice and counsel throughout the process. They continue to do so by providing input and serving on governance forums. We commend agency heads, IT and finance staff members, and others from agencies who helped successfully move this project forward.”

“This is a large, complex enterprise effort,” Moe added. “The total IT spent annually is $360 - $380 million for infrastructure with another $400 million on agencies’ application support.” 

Issues with the single supplier model developed, resulting to the innovative move to the new multisourced infrastructure. VITA now oversees a multisourcing service integrator (MSI) that provides the central connection between seven service tower suppliers. The MSI uses industry standards for a common services framework and manages the integration points through service and operational level agreements.

The MSI and tower providers are contractually bound to provide mainframe, messaging, managed security, networking (internet), servers/storage and data center, end-user support and managed print services.

“The new services model provides much more visibility by agencies into their requests for services and costs and for VITA into the functioning and status of the infrastructure,” Moe said. “It also offers the ability to inject innovation into our IT infrastructure. The Commonwealth took significant steps forward in implementing the ITISP. This award is confirmation we took the right path and that the Commonwealth is recognized as an innovative leader among states in IT.”

The award was presented at the NASCA Institute on Management and Leadership in Oklahoma City, OK.