Schwarzenegger to Mandate California IT Reform

California Gov, Arnold Schwarzenegger mandates an executive order to consolidate data centers and improve IT infrastructure to create more efficient and cost-effective IT operations. He signed the bill into a law on Tuesday. The new law is going to mandate an order such as a plan to consolidate data center space by 50% by July 2011 and to reduce energy usage from IT operations 20% by July 2011 and 30% by July 2012. The executive order also asked for the standardization of IT governance under the Office of the State CIO, which Schwarzenegger established in 2007 as a cabinet-level office.

The law highlighted a plan to host all mission-critical public-facing applications and server refreshes in a Tier III data center. This means that the state is going to close all existing data centers and server rooms that contain non-network equipment by June 2013.  The companies should also start the migration work from their existing network services to the new California Government Network no later than July 2011. Additionally, they should also migrate to a state-shared email solution no later than June 2011.

The law further emphasized the development and maintenance of enterprise architecture plans to comply with the state  enterprise architecture policies and standards which was established by the California CIO. The other mandatory requirement of the law is the participation in activities organized by the Office of Information Security in order to respond to security incidents and cyber security threats. The law indicates that the state of California is serious about organizing its IT operations.

The Office of the CIO, which will supervise all of these changes, also is in predicament. CIO Teri Takai has been waiting for confirmation at a federal job which was nominated by President Obama.