Office of the Secretary of Technology

As many of you may know, Virginia has a 10-year, $2 billion public-private partnership between VITA and Northrop Grumman in order to transform Virginia’s IT infrastructure technology and provide the expertise and resources to support improved delivery of government services. Believed to be the first and the largest of its kind in the nation, the IT Infrastructure Partnership will deliver state-of-the-art technologies with significant resources for the benefit of citizens and consumers.

VITA and Northrop Grumman formed a public private partnership to provide the latest information technology services to Virginia state government. Northrop Grumman is responsible for the service delivery of the Commonwealth's IT infrastructure needs, with oversight from VITA. It also provides the essential up-front private sector capital that otherwise would not be practically available to the Commonwealth. That capital enables the transformation of the IT environment and provides for ongoing refreshes to keep it in step with future technology advancements.

First, this is an extremely complex but valuable Commonwealth initiative that will take several more years to fully mature into the ultimate strategic outcome of having converted our 1980s infrastructure to the 21st century. Projects of this size bring about enormous change requiring cultural adjustments in the way the Commonwealth used to do business. A good example of that is in our past operating world, the Auditor of Public Accounts (APA), in its study of agencies concluded that nearly 80 percent failed to meet basic security requirements for the protection of Commonwealth assets and citizen information. As a result, some agencies without such things as virus software are now required by Commonwealth security policy to have that as a standard on all personal computers. This is only to say that the VITA implementation of that policy, for example, has in fact both increased some agency costs and led to dissatisfaction with the change.

The information technology transformation currently in progress will significantly increase the quality, consistency and level of services offered by the Commonwealth to both state and local agencies. When VITA assumed responsibility for executive agencies’ IT infrastructure—from desktops to networks, servers, and communications—the needs for upgrades and improvements were pervasive. To illustrate:

• Over 50 percent of the existing equipment was at least eight years old
• Security issues were numerous, with many PCs lacking current anti-virus software and network firewall protection from unauthorized intrusion
• Backup and disaster recovery capacity for many critical agency business systems was inadequate or simply nonexistent

We are well on the way to resolving those and other deficiencies in providing the Commonwealth with a 21st century IT infrastructure. Since our kickoff date of July 1, 2006 great progress has been made, particularly this past year, in delivering on each of the following:

• Construction of a new highly-secure primary data center
• Construction of a new disaster recovery (back-up) data center
• Consolidation of statewide help desk services
• Replacement and standardization of desktop, mainframe and server hardware across the enterprise
• Consolidation of server capacity for efficiency and to improve continuity of operations
• Substantial enterprise security operations enhancements
• Redesign and deployment of a Commonwealth-wide integrated telecommunications network for voice, data and video services

The list above represents but a small sample of the service improvements and efficiencies being brought to bear as a result of the Commonwealth and Northrop Grumman partnership. Many more tools and best practice processes are being implemented as part of this agreement, and many benefits will result.

Now to the question of costs - Among the fundamental tenets of this agreement -- to transform and operate this new environment over the ten-year life of the contract -- is to do so at no increase in annual costs for the Commonwealth’s state agencies as a whole over what those agencies were collectively spending for IT services in FY 2005. That’s an amazing value for the Commonwealth, and it clearly shows how much benefit we can gain when we pool such efforts on a statewide basis.

Among the issues at work here, however, is the fact that among the 85 diverse state agencies that benefit from this agreement, previous spending patterns for IT varied greatly. In accordance with the agreement not too exceed the aggregate cost to the Commonwealth for IT services in FY 2005, means the cost for services going forward at one agency might go up, while at another they may go down. In the aggregate total costs for VITA services have not meaningfully changed.

All of this is because VITA implements a single, statewide charge for decentralized (agency based) services, which is required by both federal and state regulations. Basically the “rule” is that every agency pays the same fees for the same services. Indeed, it is my belief that the quality, quantity and security of IT systems is being vastly improved as a result of these efforts, at no added costs to state agencies overall.

Finally, the basic General and Administrative (G&A) costs are significantly better than some might perceive. The Information Technology Investment Board (ITIB), as the oversight body of VITA is very focused on the cost of operations and set specific goals for the CIO as to an acceptable level of G&A, to be validated by independent market comparison. Since our CIO, Lem Stewart, was hired in 2004, G&A expenses as a percent of revenue have declined from 16 percent to about 10 percent. In addition the ITIB recently completed its first independent industry comparison of VITA G&A. VITA was compared to over 500 government (including other states) and commercial entities throughout the country and the result was VITA's G&A by comparison was lower than average. While the ITIB is pleased with the result we have a continuing objective to lower costs.

We hope this information is helpful. This partnership is important to the Commonwealth’s efforts to provide an agile, reliable and secure infrastructure.

Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra

Fact per IT departments is that, at least for DMHMRSAS, VITA is currently blocking the installation of IE 7 on our computers which has better security, etc.
FREE folks, so what is the problem?
IE 6 is outdated, insecure, flash doesn't work, and on and on.
OUR IT at facilities and probably all agencies can do better than VITA and Northrup Grumman handling things.

Virginia Information Technology Agency - the biggest boondoogle way of taking money from every state agency and putting it down a hole Alice couldn't find the bottom of. 

What does VITA stand for?  From the comments posted, I agree that we should get rid of this agency.  It sure doesn't seem to be very VITAL to the state of Virginia.

Well, it would appear that this forum not only allows good ideas for our state government to ponder, but also allows people to be educated on some of the "great" organizations that "occupy space." VITA, it would appear, is a cash cow. Reference familyRights statement of $23 million given to ProTech Solutions that was supposed to fix the APECS system. Governor Kaine should look into this right away and "seek first to understand" before the paper trail becomes so long, it would take years of investigations and possible court battles to get our money back.

When I brought to Tom Falat's attention the fact that DCSE's computer system was certified to the General Assembly in 1998 that it was NOT capable of managing child support collections and disbursement financial calculations per every individual court order and has a glitch that automatically generates false arrearages which then results in interest on interest being charged on top of that, (which of course is where Nick Young gets his bogus claim that $2.4 billion is "owed" to Va. children)...that number is what the FEDS base their federal incentive $$ on to give to the state each year - he told me -well, we don't handle DCSE's applications or software, we're just hardware infrastructure...when I asked about the $23 million Va gave to ProTech Solutions (a very successfulchild support collection software company in TX) - that was supposed to 'fix' the old 1998 APECS system - now called"SMILE" - ProTech said, no - they didn't create a new database or verify that the data agreed with the courts orders either, they just do a data dowload from the old APECS and jave enabled it so Va could have web access to the data - GIGO!! Voila! Follow the Money!!  In the meantime, if you are a single or divorced non custodial parent and you have a case with DCSE, you have over a 60% chance of spending some time in jail for "contempt" (174,000 jailings based on their 363,000 cases in just last 5 years)..

Anybody see the Socialist/Facist agenda here?

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."
Mein Kampf; the Ralph Manheim translation published by Houghton-Mifflin, 1943. pg 403.

The comments on VITA are correct.  The contract with Norhrop Grumman needs to be reviewed very closely by JLARC to make sure it is in the best interests of the Commonwealth of Virginia.  The "rental" charges are eye opening.  It would make more sense to just buy new computers, using a large state contract, then to pay these monthly charges.  The IT Helpdesks certainly do not justify the high costs.  Things were better when each agency had its own IT people and purchasing.  Calling the Enterprise Helpdesk just means a referral to the agency people who know the systems and the quirks.  Virginia has never done anything uniform in its history. Why expect this in the IT field where is are no standards and there are so many different means to connecting to the internet from the dinosaur of dial-up to the various high speed connections.

I originally thought VITA was a great idea, consolidating software and hardware procurement under a money-saving umbrella and promoting best practices in all state agencies' technology... then came "the partnership" of VITA and Northrop Grumman. Now state agencies are getting mandates to comply with standards on one hand (like Payment Card Industry data security, website accessibility, etc) and getting denied resources on the other. Requests for hardware or software or services that are sent to VITA often disappear, or no one can tell you whose desk it is sitting on.

I heard someone say recently that VITA is our "denial of service provider". They are a waste of money and a roadblock to getting any work done.

Finding out the cost of renting a color printer that if bought from a retail store may cost $200 absolutely floored me.  When I found out that this same printer was going to be charged a fee of $250.00 per month I wondered how the government would allow such wasteful spending.  Then I found that paying a service fee for copiers plus a $.06 per copy was being charged by this same company. 

How can this be allowed when the governor is saying that a possible 15% reduction in all state agencies is needing to be addressed.

UNBELIEVABLE - look at the wasteful spending before looking at the budgets of agencies that actually work with the people of Virginia.