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One year ago, in July 2022, OIT embarked on an aggressive mission to reduce technical debt, become better stewards of taxpayer dollars, bring our technology services and systems into the 21st century and reimagine how we do IT in Colorado.
Now that we’re a year in, we’re reflecting on the journey to reduce tech debt in state technology. The past year has been full of change and challenges. Still, our teams have exceeded expectations, and our customers continue to benefit from the improvements we are making to our systems, technologies and processes.
In July 2023, we achieved our number one goal - we moved state applications and services off the very old state-owned mainframe! This was no small feat, but we can proudly say that through this work we have reduced the risk of interrupting the delivery of critical services that could have resulted from a mainframe failure. Thank you to all who worked tirelessly to ensure this goal was met!
We’re also ahead of schedule on our work to move equipment and functions out of the eFORT data center by July 2024. We said goodbye to 83 racks at the leased data center over the past year, moving their functions to the state-owned data center or the cloud.
We achieved these two major accomplishments while also making huge strides with cloud migration projects and eliminating the use of outdated servers. Keep reading for more information on the mainframe project and how you can connect with the team to get the latest.
Project Updates
As of July 31, the eFORT Relocation Project team has emptied 83 of the original 160 occupied racks at the eFORT Data Center.
The latest successful migration out of eFORT was the Department of Revenue (DOR) on August 12. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) is next on September 16. The project team is on track to complete all migrations by July 2024, well before the end of the eFORT lease on Jan. 31, 2025.
Stay tuned for updates as the team continues working to exit eFORT and identify systems, servers and hardware for decommissioning or migration to the cloud or the Lakewood Data Center. With each successful move out of eFORT, we are consolidating physical IT assets, expanding the use of cloud infrastructure, and becoming more efficient in how our state data is collected, stored and used.
DORA is the latest agency to experience the benefits of the improved Wi-Fi that comes with the transition to the Enterprise Wireless environment.
The project team is now working with DNR to bring the benefits of the Enterprise Wireless expanded bandwidth on Phases to the offices at 1313 Sherman St. and 6060 Broadway. In case you missed it, DNR upgraded to Enterprise Wi-Fi in June at the Littleton office location.
CDHS will be next on the upgrade list!
OIT is making strides having just completed the first round of Cisco phone firmware upgrades at Denver state office locations. Beginning this evening, firmware upgrades will take place at the locations listed on page 4 of the project FAQ.
Updated phones across the board will enable the state to move off the outdated Cisco MIPC phones onto the more secure Cisco Webex DI platform. State employees will soon have the most reliable and accessible phone service that keeps pace with new technology advancements. The team still has its sights on September 22, 2023 for the final migration to the new platform.
Reminder for employees with 78XX and 88XX series phones: If you experience issues after the firmware upgrade, report them to the OIT Voice team at 303.764.7630 on Aug. 18 from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Afterward, you can submit a ticket to OIT Service Desk.
The latest initiative coming out of Network and Security Optimization Phase 3 is the Data Center Core Equipment Upgrade, a collaborative effort between OIT and Lumen (our managed service provider). The equipment Lumen uses to monitor and maintain the network equipment is either at or nearing end-of-life, presenting risks ranging from costly equipment repair to widespread security vulnerabilities. Lumen will replace the equipment in the coming weeks eliminating the security risk posed by older equipment.
*What is the CSN Core network? This is the group of main network distribution locations for the state network infrastructure.
OIT is also collaborating with Lumen on another major undertaking, the Vendor Edge Router Refresh, part of Network and Security Optimization Phase 3. Lumen needs to update their network equipment at roughly 400 locations around the state. Many of their routers and switches are old and are no longer supported by the manufacturer, presenting an array of risks (e.g., network interruptions, weakened security). By making the needed upgrades, the equipment our network is built on will be more reliable and open up modernization opportunities, including easier integration with newer tech, better user experience and cloud capabilities.
At this time, we have been able to make the updates at 20 locations with 18 currently being planned out in the Denver metro and Colorado Springs areas.
 Cue the celebrations - as of July 29, the state’s decades old mainframe was decommissioned, and all mainframe operations were successfully migrated to our vendor-hosted mainframe environment!
This effort was many years in the making and over the past several months, the OIT project team worked tirelessly alongside our vendor and our agency partners to ensure a smooth transition from our state-owned mainframe to the hosted solution. We want to thank our project manager Shelly Porter, mainframe operations supervisor Bill Smith, the Enterprise Project Management Office, technical teams, service desk staff, project team members and agency partners across the state. This was a tremendous team effort, and we all share in this success.
We will now focus our mainframe tech debt work on modernizing several critical applications to ensure Coloradans will continue receiving life-sustaining benefits and support from our agency partners while setting the foundation for a modern, cost-effective, agile digital government in Colorado.
There have been some changes to the overall timeline for moving TIBCO Cyberfusion off of the current mainframe and replacing TIBCO Cyberfusion with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud and the TIBCO Managed File Transfer (MFT) solution.
The existing TIBCO Cyberfusion file transfer application was migrated to the vendor-hosted mainframe. The Social Security Administration (SSA) approved the TIBCO MFT solution and will support the multiple agencies impacted to transfer files and data securely. The final solution must include security standards for SSA and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Federal Tax Information (FTI). The State and the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) are awaiting approval from the IRS on the proposed MFT solution.
Once the conversion to AWS and TIBCO MFT is completed, the TIBCO Cyberfusion application will be removed from the State’s vendor-hosted mainframe. The overall project is now 84% complete.
The team continues to march towards its goal of remediating all known Salesforce security vulnerabilities. It has remediated 88% of the identified vulnerabilities across all agencies. In August, they continued working on Governor’s Office (GOV) remediations and successfully released the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s (CDLE) remediated files into the production environment.
The overall project is 78% complete and on track for completion by the end of September 2023.
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