Schaaf promotes merging local state data centers

State government could save money and have safer technology access if it merged all data centers into one location, state Sen. Rob Schaaf told a Senate committee Wednesday.

He wants the Missouri Legislature to pass a bill requiring all executive, legislative, and judicial branches, "and all otherwise state-owned data centers become consolidated to the information technology services division state data center by Oct. 1, 2016."

Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, told the Senate's Governmental Accountability and Fiscal Oversight Committee he was impressed with the Office of Administration's data center in the Truman Building, and found it to be "very impressive and well-run."

Lobbyist Richard McIntosh represents numerous technology clients, but testified Wednesday as an individual.

"What you see with this bill follows exactly the trend that corporate America has been doing, in terms of consolidating their data centers," McIntosh explained. "I believe that the Highway Patrol has a data center, the Judiciary has its own data center, Conservation has a data center.

"And, technically, the Legislature has a data center, although it's very small."

None of those agencies testified for, or against, Schaaf's bill at Wednesday's hearing.

Schaaf noted the proposal carries a high fiscal note, "the major component of which is, the Highway Patrol believes that they need to purchase new equipment - which is kind of ridiculous, because they don't. They have equipment."

In the fiscal note accompanying Schaaf's bill at the committee hearing, the Patrol told the Legislative Research Committee's Fiscal Oversight division its costs would be about $5.5 million for servers, networking equipment and connections to be used at the State Data Center for certain data under federal law.

The Conservation Commission estimated the proposal would cost it more than $100,000, while most other agencies that commented said there would be little or no additional expenses.

The Lottery Commission said it couldn't join the combined data center because of its multi-state contract obligations for separate IT systems independent from other networks to protect the integrity of national lottery games.

The judiciary didn't comment at the hearing or to the Legislative Research office.

McIntosh told the Senate committee Wednesday the only change would be the physical location of the computer equipment.

"Those agencies would still run their data," he explained. "They would still own the data. They would control their data.

"No one else would have access to the data."

Ken Hillman directs the OA data center Schaaf wants all local state agencies to use.

"Instead of investing in multiple sites, one of the things is, we invest in redundancy," he explained. "We mentioned about having a secondary site (in Springfield) to the state data center, and our best practice is to be able to replicate services quickly between the two sites."

But under today's operating conditions, instead of having one Jefferson City center with the Springfield back-up, Hillman said, "multiple data centers have to replicate to multiple, disparate sites.

"This puts more pressure on your network investment, because you have to expand your network to - instead of two primary sites where you're investing significant dollars, you're looking at numerous sites."

Then-Gov. Matt Blunt's administration began the effort to consolidate technology services.

And Hillman, a 17-year state IT veteran, told the senators Wednesday: "We have estimated well over $2 million (in savings) just in server-reductions."

There is plenty of room for future expansion inside the state data center, according to Hillman, McIntosh and Schaaf.

And, McIntosh noted, lawmakers already "have, proactively, spent somewhere between $9 million and $18 million in the past two years, to upgrade security of Missouri's data. And it was because of those efforts that some of the folks who tried to attack us in Ferguson, and some other events, were not successful."

The committee took no action on the proposal Wednesday.