During a recent Industry Insider — Texas event, CIO Bruce Hermes named cybersecurity and consolidation as his team’s top priorities.
“The Department of Agriculture is by and large a regulatory agency. We do lots of licensing in agriculture professions as well as agriculture business,” Hermes said. “But in addition to that, unlike most other states, we have the school lunch — the food and nutrition program — in the Department of Agriculture; most other states, it's in the education agency.”
While the food and nutrition program runs on an outsourced software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform used by multiple states, one of the foremost IT responsibilities is licensing, which is “a well-developed business model ... so that's where we spend the majority of our time.”
The licensing system, BRIDGE, is described in the Legislative Appropriations Request for exceptional items as “outmoded” and “too problematic to maintain and enhance.” The agency has “selected a plan — to leverage the existing marketplace for licensing/regulatory software-as-a-service,” the document says.
A new SaaS system will have:
- Security management
- A mainstream licensing/regulatory software
- Modern business intelligence
- Expanded customer self-service features
- A well-trained vendor team
- Vendor data center
The current system is built on outdated technology, lacks proper support staff, has difficulty reconciling transactions properly and isn’t accessible on mobile, among other issues.
In addition to replacing BRIDGE, Hermes mentioned bringing together additional technology used in the department, mentioning disparate workflows and platforms, limited users on multiple licenses, and a lack of centralization for HR or facilities requests.
"We are hopeful that we'll get that funding, and in the meantime, the Legislature has been giving us little drips of money each biennium for three sessions,” Hermes said. “We got a million and then a million. The first million we used to hire a study, and now we are on the verge of doing a deal to put one, two or three of our 20 or so programs onto a new platform"
“If we get the additional [funds] in the next biennium, we may, depending on the cost, be able to follow through with replacing all at once," Hermes said. "We're just hoping for the best over the next ... weeks and then also watching the line-item details.”
Want to do business with TDA? A few tips:
- Be TX-RAMP certified through the Department of Information Resources (DIR).
- Be familiar with legislative appropriations for the agency and understand what those numbers mean.
- Understand the Texas budget process.
- Don't send cold emails or make cold sales calls.
- Research the agency and then build a relationship.
- Be responsive, supportive and willing to help solve problems from the outset.
“You know, we’re a very, very lean agency,” Hermes said. “We have great ambitions, but we may have to sacrifice certain other things … read the legislative appropriations requests and read the general appropriations act.”
