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CIO Update for the Week of July 6

What a great week across the State. Most Members were off on Friday afternoon. The weather cooperated. The pictures of fireworks on Saturday – wherever you were – were spectacular. I trust that you enjoyed the weather thoroughly. In looking at the calendar for the week of July 6th, the following items of general interest are worth commenting on:

News

New

  • The Maestro Committee meets on Wednesday. ITAC meets on Thursday. The Digital COE Committee also meets on Thursday.

  • The next CIO Council will be held on October 20th. We have received only one offer. Is anyone else interested in hosting this event?

  • DIR sent the following note to Texas IRM’s last week:

    Hello State of Texas IRMs & PMs!

    As agencies are beginning to prepare for FY16 projects, we wanted remind customers of the recent changes to the Texas Project Delivery Framework (TPDF) for Major Information Resource Projects.

    Over the past year, a TPDF process improvement project team made up of representatives of state agencies reviewed the TPDF deliverable process and revised agency deliverables based on statutory requirements. The end result requires fewer mandatory documents as well as aligns with the latest version of the PMBOK Project Management Process Groups. Attached is a mapping of how the TPDF has changed. Highlights of the changes include:

    • Review Gate Approvals have been eliminated
    • Project Charter and Closeout are no longer required to be sent to QAT (the Post Implementation Review of Business Objectives is still required). However project charters and closeout reports are still encouraged to be used on projects as an agency best practice.
    • Optional templates deemed valuable by state agencies will still be available on an optional template page on the Framework website coming next month. However, don’t hesitate to contact me directly or use the Project Delivery Mailbox mailbox for any templates you are having difficulty finding.

In Process

  • All Universities should be prepared to participate in the EDUCAUSE Core Data project. Our participation enables TAMUS Universities to maintain an IHE waiver from providing data required of other State agencies.

System-Wide Contracting News

In Process

  • The RFP responses for Member governance will continued to be reviewed this week.

  • The RFI responses for the Maestro RFI will continued to be reviewed this week.

  • The RFP for a Digital COE is being reviewed by OGC.

  • TAMUS is finalizing the amendment to engage SolutionsPlus to provide RFP evaluation assistance for the Banner Services RFP.

Repeats

  • Siteimprove checks web pages, every five days, for spelling, grammar, broken links, and accessibility. The cost is 54 cents per web page per year. Any Members interested in adding this service need to contact me directly.

  • The System-wide agreement with Cisco WebEx allows Members to purchase licenses for their entire faculty/administrators at the low cost of $1.44/month/license.

  • Syncplicity licensing is available for all Members.

Projects

In Process

  • The Request for Proposal (RFP) for the Workday system integrator has been posted on the Electronic State Business Daily (ESBD) which can be found by clicking on the following link: Workday RFP.

  • TAMU opened negotiations with a second component #1 vendor (data center build out). The evaluation of the second component (compute and storage) and third components (IT services) will commenced last week.

  • Utilities & Energy Services is working with Engineering to serve as the pilot of Cisco EnergyWise.

SCIO Trips/Visits

  • No trips scheduled for this week.