Bill Text: NJ S1918 | 2010-2011 | Regular Session | Introduced
Bill Title: Directs Chief Technology Officer to conduct study of costs and benefits of replacing the State's high-volume, basic computing systems with more cost-effective alternatives.
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)
Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2011-03-21 - Substituted by A910 [S1918 Detail]
Download: New_Jersey-2010-S1918-Introduced.html
Sponsored by:
Senator ROBERT M. GORDON
District 38 (Bergen)
SYNOPSIS
Directs Chief Technology Officer to conduct study of costs and benefits of replacing the State's high-volume, basic computing systems with more cost-effective alternatives.
CURRENT VERSION OF TEXT
As introduced.
An Act providing for the study of high-volume, basic computing systems.
Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:
1. As used in this act:
"High-volume, basic computing system" or "HVBC system" means a designated network of computers, which in daily operation:
(1) supports or is capable of supporting more than ten million transactions per hour or is used to store more than one terabyte of State data; and
(2) is used for critical computing needs including, but not limited to, bulk data processing, resource planning, statistical generation, process monitoring and process modeling.
The term "HVBC system" also includes the applications, operating system and other support software, hardware add-ons, and maintenance services required by such a system.
"Office of Information Technology" or "office" means the office established by section 9 of P.L.2007, c.56 (C.52:18A-227).
"Overall value" with respect to an HVBC system, means and includes the total cost of ownership, the quality of hardware, the software or services to be delivered by contractors supporting the HVBC system, the responsiveness and account service record of contractors and contractors' willingness to share risk.
2. a. Notwithstanding any law, rule, regulation or order to the contrary, the Chief Technology Officer within the Office of Information Technology, shall conduct a study of high volume, basic computing ("HVBC") systems used by State departments and agencies to manage high-volume operations such as the processing of motor vehicle records, tax returns, employee benefits and similar categories of high volume account processing.
b. The study required pursuant to subsection a. of this section shall include, but not be limited to: (1) an examination by the Chief Technology Officer of the current use of, and reliance on, HVBC systems by State departments and agencies; (2) an analysis of the costs to the State of continuing to use and rely on such systems; and (3) an analysis of the potential savings from, and the potential consequences of, adopting other types of large scale computing systems that may be available in the marketplace as alternatives to continuing to employ the State's existing HVBC systems.
c. The study shall also include, but not be limited to, an analysis of:
(1) the nature of the operations currently supported by HVBC systems that are used by State departments and agencies and the need to conduct such operations in a reliable, secure, scalable and end-user friendly manner;
(2) the expenses associated with existing HVBC systems including employee costs, one-time charges, recurring charges and average maintenance charges attributable to the components of such systems;
(3) the extent of the State's reliance on non-State employees for system maintenance and support, and the feasibility of having those functions performed by either new or existing State employees;
(4) an assessment of the overall value of the existing HVBC systems to the State;
(5) the availability of alternative large scale computing systems in the marketplace that offer capacity and performance similar to the existing HVBC system used by the State;
(6) the costs of components for alternative large scale computing systems, based on good-faith cost estimates, similar to the components used in the State's existing HVBC system, if such components are generally available;
(7) the feasibility of having system maintenance and support functions performed by State employees for an alternative large scale computing system that is comparable to the State's existing HVBC system, if such a system is available; and
(8) whether alternative large scale computing systems that are available in the marketplace might provide the State with overall value comparable to, less than, or greater than the HVBC system currently used by the State.
d. After completing the study required by this section, the Chief Technology Officer shall submit a report of findings, recommendations and priorities to the Governor and the Legislature pursuant to section 2 of P.L.1991, c.164 (C.52:14-19.1). In developing the report, the Chief Technology Officer shall: (1) solicit comment from those entities with an interest in either continuing to employ the existing HVBC system or switching to one or more of the alternative large scale computing systems that may be available; (2) incorporate into the report relevant, publicly available case studies; (3) compare the cost of operating alternative systems described in those case studies to the cost of supporting the State's existing HVBC system; (4) describe any limitations the State may be subject to in hiring, as State employees, HVBC system support engineers and technicians; and (5) describe the overall value of alternative large scale computing systems studied. The report shall be completed pursuant to this section and delivered no later than six months following the effective date of this act.
3. This act shall take effect immediately.
STATEMENT
This bill directs the Chief Technology Officer within the Office of Information Technology to conduct a study of the current use of high-volume, basic computing ("HVBC") systems by State departments and agencies and to analyze the potential costs and benefits of switching to alternative types of large scale computing systems that may be available in the marketplace.
HVBC systems have been used for many years by both private sector and governmental enterprises to handle critical operations that involve tens of millions of transactions per hour and the storage of trillions of bytes of data.
Governmental agencies use HVBC systems to manage motor vehicle records, tax returns, Medicare transactions, employee benefits and similar types of transactions. While many types of computer users have benefited during the past 20 years from improvement in the price-performance of many different types of computers, it is unclear whether governmental users have benefited to the same degree from these broader efficiency and performance improvements.
The intent of this bill is to have an appropriate study done by the State's Chief Technology Officer to determine whether it is feasible to replace the State's existing HVBC systems with more cost-effective alternative systems and if so, what the costs and benefits are of proceeding with the replacement of existing HVBC hardware systems with a new generation of large scale computing systems.
