The hearing featured various speakers, including Warren Sponholtz, the state’s chief information officer; Tim Brown, the executive director of Northwest Regional Data Center; Kenneth Kicia, Florida Department of Corrections CIO; and other state agency CIOs.
One of the major topics discussed was cloud modernization. Notable allocations in Fiscal Year 2022-23 totaled $5 million for the Northwest Regional Data Center (NWRDC) to conduct a cloud readiness assessment, $10 million for NWRDC to move customers’ agency applications to third-party cloud services, and about $140 million to help agencies migrate and modernize their applications to cloud services.
Several projects funded by these allocations are multiyear efforts, prompting lawmakers and agency CIOs to discuss project progress and the cost of other agency cloud migration efforts.
Sponholtz said cloud technology has allowed the state to run servers, computers and applications remotely at a greater scale, driving down costs and providing users with more flexibility and scalability.
“It gives us the ability to be able to bring up services, bring up applications, and bring them back down as we need to, instead of having to do complicated planning and resource allocation for a more traditional on-prem model,” he said.
Until now, the agency has collaborated with other state agencies to guide them in adapting computer systems and applications to the cloud. In fact, according to Sponholtz, the Florida Digital Service plans to meet with the Department of Transportation soon to help with its cloud modernization strategy.
To further explain the state’s approach to cloud modernization, Rep. John Snyder, R-86, called on Tim Brown to discuss how the data center has played a role in cloud modernization within the state.
On Dec. 31, 2023, the NWRDC compiled responses from state agencies as part of a cloud readiness assessment focusing on security, latency and application architectures and their compatibility with the cloud.
“We had 24 agencies and 890 applications that we received information for,” Brown said. “What we did as far as our recommendations, we looked at it from two different ways: We could go after the lower risk projects, but the lowest risk had the least amount of impact for the state, or we could go after the most impactful projects, but those had the highest risk.”
Risk refers to the difficulty of moving an application to the cloud or redesigning it to be cloud-compatible.
As a result, NWRDC decided to tackle this challenge in two phases: 82 low-risk applications will move to the cloud in phase one, while 36 higher-risk applications will move in phase two.
“You didn’t have to wait for phase one to be complete for phase two to begin,” Brown said. “But it was just an idea of, let’s start with low-hanging fruit, get those done, gain experience in this, and then we could move on to the more risky, more difficult transformations.”
Four state agency CIOs shared several updates on their cloud modernization efforts. Industry Insider — Florida will follow up with additional coverage examining each agency’s approach to the cloud.
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
“The cloud modernization program that we’re embarking upon is to modernize 98 legacy applications,” CIO Kicia said. “There’s 86 applications for the Florida Department of Corrections and 12 for the Florida Commission on Offender Review.”
Kicia explained that the effort is separate but integrated with the department’s Offender-Based Information System (OBIS) modernization project. “Both of these projects work together to make sure we’re meeting the state’s cloud-first initiative.”
An updated assessment was conducted in March 2023, recommending immediate remediation and replacement of legacy and mission-critical applications.
As a result, the department is evaluating each application using the following process: “We define the requirements, we rationalize, buy, build and consolidate,” Kicia said. “We design solutions, we code and configure, and then we test, accept and release. We’re using a traditional software development life cycle for the Florida Department of Corrections, and we’re using an agile methodology with our development vendors.”
According to Kicia, the department has analyzed more than 40 million lines of code, assessed 6,300 stored procedures, examined more than 1,300 databases and conducted more than 200 joint application development sessions so far.
Other specific cloud modernization efforts the department is focusing on include two initiatives: “The first is to define the architecture, including delivery processes, architecture and website assessment, design principle and tools, cloud architectural design, delivery governance, and all of that is wrapped with continual service improvement,” Kicia said.
Phase two, on the other hand, focuses on application modernization.
“This is a three-year program,” Kicia said. “We are in the middle of year two in phase two. Currently, in this phase, we’re focused on 50 applications, but when you look at it overall for the 98, we’ve got five applications that have been delivered and modernized. We have seven that have been identified for a custom build where we’ve given our business requirements documents to five subcontractors. We have 17 that have been identified as buy-at-cost products, and then we have 15 that are migrating within OBIS and will be included in the OBIS project. We also have 19 that we’ve identified to decommission, and so that leaves the remainder to be developed in phase three.
“My goal is to make sure that we are able to execute this project successfully, on time, on budget, at the desired scope, and drive success as we drive towards this cloud,” he said.
Stay tuned for continuing agency cloud modernization coverage from Industry Insider — Florida in the coming days.
