Overview
As the lead enterprise information technology (IT) organization for the Executive Branch, EOTSS seeks to improve and promote and better service delivery to its constituent agencies.
EOTSS works toward this goal by making investments in the development and deployment of centrally managed programs that more efficiently deliver solutions through modern technologies, enterprise leadership and expertise, and economies of scale.
Examples of EOTSS enterprise program leadership can be found in just about every section of this report from the COVID-19 response to the Modern Workplace Program and other programs being deployed at the enterprise level. However, this section highlights several of the lesser-known enterprise programs developed and improved upon these past two years.
e-Discovery
The EOTSS e-discovery Team supports secretariats and agencies in the Executive Branch by providing technical tools and services for searching electronically stored email data located in multiple Commonwealth email systems and files. Legal departments across the Executive Branch are increasingly relying on digital tools to perform their work. To meet this increasing demand, the EOTSS e-discovery Team is actively engaged in the implementation of enterprise software capable of ingesting large volumes of electronic data from multiple sources beyond email data, such as desktop applications and network share drives.
This enterprise software solution offers Commonwealth lawyers the capability of using cutting-edge search, analysis, and visualization tools. The Commonwealth’s investment in this type of robust enterprise software is expected to increase transparency and operational efficiencies in responding to legal requests, including public records requests (PRRs), subpoenas, and litigation holds. The e-discovery-as-a-service program offered by EOTSS to the executive branch agencies has been successful and well-received by the agency users. Using this service has greatly reduced the laborious process by agency legal staff and support staff to locate, identify, retrieve, and index the files. In some cases, hundreds of hours of staff time were used in preparing and extracting these files for legal review and response.
In 2020, the E-discovery Team fielded over 750 requests from state agencies. That number grew to more than 850 requests the following year, and the team is on a similar pace so far in 2022.
In 2020, the E-discovery Team fielded over 750 requests from state agencies. That number grew to more than 850 requests the following year, and the team is on a similar pace so far in 2022.
Enterprise Print Services
The Commonwealth’s Managed Print Services pilot formed under the Governor’s Cross-Secretariat Operational Council (XOC) and further evolved into the new Enterprise Print Services program to better support a remote workforce and leverage digital print capabilities.
This past year, EOTSS introduced the enterprise consolidated print services model – a vendor-agnostic, software-driven solution that provides for a centrally-managed, secure service for on premise and remote printing. This program also eliminates thousands of individual desk printers in lieu of high-volume, multi-functional devices staged strategically throughout agencies – reducing operating costs, service call volume for maintenance and repairs, and the consumption of consumables such as toner.
EOTSS is currently rolling out the new solution at its agency locations and will then coordinate the broader enterprise rollout for FY23.
EOTSS Print & Mail Operations
Beyond the Enterprise Print Services Program that speaks to multi-function printers, copiers, and scanners in agency locations, EOTSS also operates a high-capacity print and mail operation within its footprint at the Massachusetts Information Technology Center (MITC) in Chelsea, MA and the Boston Mailroom at the McCormack Building.
The Chelsea Print Service operates 7 days per week and provides high-capacity production printing services for customer agencies – including agency reports and business application output (e.g. RMV Titles, Registrations and Letters, MassHealth Eligibility Determinations, Approvals, Denials, Notices, Treasury Checks, and UMASS Notices). The print service offers Standard (Simplex) printing and Special (Duplex) printing, form design and maintenance, and uses 3 Xerox high-capacity production cut sheet printers.
The Chelsea Mail Service includes bursting, folding, inserting, metering, pre-sorting, barcoding, and postage services for customer agencies. The mail service staff operate 8 Inserters, 2 Metering Machines, and 1 Fluence Automation Barcoder/Sorter 6 days per week.
| Chelsea Print Room Volume | Chelsea Mailroom Volume | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secretariat | FY 2020 | FY 2021 | FY 2020 | FY 2021 |
| ANF | 321,649 | 124,625 | 10,877,578 | 9,948,445 |
| DOT | 4,598,577 | 3,049,340 | 2,804,383 | 2,639,614 |
| EDU | 5,249 | 38 | 3,279 | 6,869 |
| EED | 836,389 | 731,889 | 609,065 | 502,403 |
| EHS | 45,489,948 | 23,895,860 | 12,109,867 | 5,267,845 |
| ELW | 513 | - | 7,673 | 18,009 |
| ENV | 28,495 | 29,215 | 37,531 | 37,417 |
| EPS | 69,360 | 53,554 | - | 891,698 |
| OTH | 1,486,289 | 1,001,210 | 534,657 | 653,619 |
| TSS | 237,810 | - | 217,551 | - |
| Grand total | 53,074,279.50 | 28,885,731 | 27,201,584 | 19,959,050 |
Lastly, the EOTSS Boston mailroom in the McCormack Building provides interoffice mail, courier, and USPS window service (including mail drop-off, pickup, postage and metering services). The associated courier service delivers mail 3 days per week to 19 Staniford Street (Hurley), 100 Cambridge Street (Saltonstall), 600 Washington Street, 1000 Washington Street, 251 Causeway Street, and 200 Arlington Street in Chelsea (MITC).
The print and mail operations have experienced a decrease in volume during the pandemic and the state’s shift to a hybrid workforce model.
Contract Management Office & Enterprise software licensing
To ensure EOTSS is being a good steward of taxpayer dollars, it established an enterprise-wide software licensing and contract management program. EOTSS is in the process of further building out the Contracts Management office – which handles enterprise-wide IT contracts, software licensing, contract/licensing compliance, Cloud Services, Software as a Service (SaaS), and overall IT procurement support/ guidance to other state agencies. This team worked with the Operational Services Division (OSD) to rewrite and implement the Commonwealth’s newer and more streamlined information technology terms and conditions for state contracts.
This office handles the core hands-on work, overseeing these IT contracts and working with various vendors. This office routinely reviews and engages in major Request for Responses (RFR’s) initiated by numerous state agencies. Additionally, this team upon request will engage in contract negotiations, development of statement of works and program deliverables.
This centralized procurement and management approach has resulted in the negotiation of highly discounted enterprise volume licensing agreements with several major software providers, resulting in annual savings for the Commonwealth by way of license costs, maintenance, and cost avoidance for over deployment of licenses.
Since January of 2020, this office has completed over 300 contract transactions, supporting internal contracting, enterprise contracting, and other agencies – and partnered with the Operational Services Division on more than 12 statewide contracts.
Since January of 2020, this office has completed over 300 contract transactions, supporting internal contracting, enterprise contracting, and other agencies – and partnered with the Operational Services Division on more than 12 statewide contracts. The office has realized more than $34 million in enterprise agreement savings for the Commonwealth during this period.
Perhaps more importantly from a security perspective, this enterprise structure ensures that software deployments and systems across the Commonwealth are up to date with the latest releases, including security patches and bug fixes. The cost avoidance gained in maintaining up-to-date software systems can be measured in operational impacts to government services resulting from security breaches or system failures due to unsupported or compromised software.
IT Enterprise Recruiting
Agency IT and agency leadership, along with their respective agency finance and human resources teams, work with EOTSS leadership and the EOTSS human resources department to develop and manage the IT staffing strategy and programs for the Commonwealth's Executive Branch.
As part of the budgetary and strategic planning processes, agencies and their respective CIO offices define strategic objectives and how best to utilize existing resources. EOTSS has an internal position management process, and other secretariats deploy similar processes for their respective IT organizations.
Once an individual leaves the organization, their role and functions are reviewed to determine if the position aligns with strategic objectives or if a different role is needed. When a new role is identified, HR works with the respective IT leadership team to develop the role and responsibilities, and a well- defined recruitment strategy is in place to source and identify top candidates.
A dedicated EOTSS recruitment team handles both internal needs as well as those of Executive Branch agencies. Where staff are being redirected in responsibility, the manager, in consultation with IT leadership, identifies training opportunities to best equip the individual for new roles or responsibilities.
IT Accessibility & Adaptive Technology
The agency ensures that all Mass.gov and agency applications and systems comply with the latest federal and state IT Accessibility laws, regulations, and guidance – in addition to industry best practices.
Accordingly, EOTSS offers information, guidelines, techniques, and resources for ensuring websites and applications are accessible to all and comply with the Commonwealth's accessibility policy. EOTSS plans to update its guidance on IT Accessibility in FY22 and FY23 – including the Enterprise IT Accessibility Standards, Web Accessibility Standards, the IT Accessibility Guide, and the IT Acquisition Access Compliance Program.
The agency also regularly collaborates with a working group chaired by the Massachusetts Office on Disability (MOD), A&F, and several EOHHS agency designees to review IT accessibility policies and guidelines with respect to end user hardware and software, collaboration tools, constituent accessibility, and procurements.
Enterprise Chat Bot
Based on the success of the COVID-19 and My Vax Records chatbots, EOTSS is developing a plan to expand the use of a chatbot across Mass.gov to connect the state’s residents, businesses, and visitors more efficiently with the information they are seeking.
Expanding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – chatbots, virtual assistants, voice recognition and commands – is a top priority for improving the citizen experience when interacting with government services.
Service Catalog & Customer Engagement Review
EOTSS recently embarked on a multi-year customer engagement initiative (the EOTSS Customer and Service Engagement Enhancement Program) to provide enhanced service to partners in the Executive Branch, Independents, and Constitutional Offices.
Through this program, EOTSS aims to increase transparency around service offerings and costs, ensure service offerings match customer needs, and promote greater trust and satisfaction through an improved customer experience and fulfillment.
Through this program, EOTSS aims to increase transparency around service offerings and costs, ensure service offerings match customer needs, and promote greater trust and satisfaction through an improved customer experience and fulfillment.
First and foremost, the team is launching a new Product & Service Catalog that provides state agencies and customers a more detailed description of the available products and services coupled with transparent pricing and an improved customer interface.
Additionally, EOTSS is re-structuring the customer success team to focus on assisting and guiding agencies and staff in acquiring the requested products and services needed. Traditionally, the EOTSS team has focused on ensuring agencies completed the necessary procurement process forms to receive the requested services; under this new model, the team will focus on ensuring agencies and staff’s orders are appropriately accounted for and successfully fulfilled.
To accomplish this, EOTSS will provide pre-engagement technical and business consulting, project management where needed, customer and product support, and order fulfillment assistance. Furthermore, the team will establish a customer quality assurance process.
Lastly, the rollout of a new product and service catalog also provides the opportunity to evaluate which services should be included in EOTSS’ chargeback. EOTSS leadership launched an internal initiative to take advantage of this opportunity and transform the chargeback system into a more predictable and transparent cost-recovery model. The cost-recovery model for each service, whether existing or new, is being reviewed and redesigned to establish a clear and consistent charging methodology that best reflects the cost of that service.
As we move forward, we continue to prioritize strong communications, collaboration and strengthening our commitment to customer success. In this regard, EOTSS has committed to a comprehensive restructuring of our customer relationship management model that is designed to improve upon our ability and capacity to successfully meet the challenges that our agencies and customers are faced with in the delivery of government services.
ServiceNow
EOTSS stood up the ServiceNow platform to help IT service management (ITSM) for agencies supported by EOTSS.
Agencies traditionally use the platform to report IT issues and request IT services and products. However, over the last 18 months, agencies have come to EOTSS with requests to use the ServiceNow platform for business needs outside of ITSM.
Examples of recent cross-agency collaborations on ServiceNow include:
1. Executive Office for Administration and Finance:
- Human Resources Division (HRD) online forms
2. Executive Office of Education (EOE)
Executive Office online forms, back-end support, and enhancements
Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) forms and back-end support
Department of Higher Education (DHE) student complaint portal
Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) Background Record Check portal
3. Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS)
Municipal Police Training Committee (MPTC) asset inventory management system
Department of Criminal Justice Information Services (DCJIS) Criminal Records Access Unit (CARU) call center inquiries
4. Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD)
- Department of Family Medical Leave (DFML) online forms and back-end support
5. Office of the Child Advocate (OCA)
- Juvenile Justice data sites
MassGIS
The MA Bureau of Geographic Information Systems (MassGIS) resides at EOTSS and is the state’s one-stop-shop for interactive maps and associated descriptive information. The EOTSS team coordinates GIS activities in state and local government and sets GIS data standards. MassGIS serves a broad constituency including government, private sector, non-profit, and educational customers which means that the data they provide supports emergency response actions, real-estate research, environmental planning and management, transportation planning, economic development, and engineering services.
Over the past two years, the GIS team was instrumental in providing data and maps for the following enterprise projects (among others):
Statewide Land Cover Mapping: In collaboration with EOEEA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Coastal Management, MassGIS completed statewide landcover mapping based on 2016 aerial imagery. This was an important new data set for many constituent groups.
Automated Intake of Municipal Parcel Mapping Updates: MassGIS receives parcel mapping updates for as many as 200 cities and towns per year. This application provides a web portal for the upload and automates the tracking, storage, and initial QA of the delivery. This automation saves about 15 minutes per delivery.
Statewide Mapping of Solar Arrays: For the Department of Energy Resources, MassGIS used imagery analysis software to identify solar arrays statewide on 2019 imagery; the cleared area around each array was mapped and the land cover present under each array on 2010 aerial imagery was mapped. The land cover types on what are now solar arrays was summarized by town and statewide.
STEM On-Line: Partnered with the Lt. Governor's Office to create an interactive map that shows the school districts where various STEM programs have been implemented. Within the map a user can click on a school district and see the STEM programs offered. The application also enables users to filter school districts by the number and type of STEM programs.
Read more information about MassGIS' customer base and Action-Impactful Projects.
MassGIS Mass Mapper
In October of 2021, the Baker-Polito Administration announced the launch of MassMapper, a new online interactive mapping tool developed by MassGIS. This new tool enables municipalities and private sector organizations – especially those in the land survey, engineering, and real estate industries – to better interact with the Commonwealth. MassMapper offers an enhanced user experience for many of its primary uses like site design, land inventory, and public policy planning.
MassMapper replaces the existing, legacy online mapping tool, OLIVER, which has been in use in its current form for over a decade. The new tool is powered by a modern, lightweight, open-source software that will offer improved performance and overall user experience, including on mobile tablet devices. The upgrade to MassMapper represents one of many ongoing initiatives in the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security’s overall mission of modernizing the Commonwealth’s legacy IT and cybersecurity infrastructure to offer a more efficient, effective, and secure government to the people we serve.
In addition to offering a faster, cleaner, and more intuitive user experience, MassMapper offers a number of new features:
Map Markup: Users now have markup capabilities to customize the map, including the ability to add text, draw boundaries, etc.
Geo-Fencing: Ability to geo-fence an area by drawing a boundary to pull data from a targeted location on a map – a task that is particularly helpful when downloading data for a targeted location into Excel/CSV files.
PDF Work Product: Users can now create a PDF of a customized map for an improved final work product for users to share with their customers.
MassMapper was developed with capital funding secured in Governor Baker’s General Governmental Bond Bill, which the Legislature passed into law in 2020 to invest in Commonwealth cybersecurity posture and IT infrastructure modernization initiatives. The interactive mapping tool’s new capabilities were developed through extensive outreach to solicit user feedback from the public and private sector, as well as thorough product testing prior to its launch. MassMapper can be accessed on any device: computer, tablet, and mobile.
MassGIS also offers Muni Mappers, a by-request, custom-built mapping service that incorporates local data provided by the municipality for a more customized mapping tool at no cost to the municipality. This service is largely leveraged by smaller municipalities in the Commonwealth with limited resources for IT services, making the procurement of expensive commercial products infeasible.
Interoperable Communications Bureau
The EOTSS Interoperable Communications Bureau provides infrastructure, planning, and support to promote interoperable communications amongst first responders, public safety, public health, and other government services across a growing spectrum of communications tools. Read for more information about the Massachusetts Statewide Communication Interoperability Plan.
Commonwealth of Massachusetts Interoperable Radio System (CoMIRS)
CoMIRS is the statewide public safety radio system that provides operable and interoperable communications for state, regional and local government agencies supporting over 16,000 users. The CoMIRS Program Management Office’s mission is to modernize the Commonwealth’s interoperable public safety radio system and to provide the infrastructure, planning, and support needed for mission critical radio communications. Read for more information about the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Interoperable Radio System.
In partnership with EOPSS and MA State Police, EOTSS selected a vendor to replace the statewide public safety radio system with a new P-25 standards-based interoperable digital system (CoMIRS) that will offer enhanced communications capabilities through improved reliability, increased capacity, and expanded coverage. This is a multi-year project that will extend into 2025.
AlertsMA
AlertsMA is a communications platform offered by the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) that allows Massachusetts government organizations to notify employees, contractors, and the public in near real-time about emergency safety situations and other important events on work or personal devices. Alerts can be sent using an individual’s preferred communication methods, including via text, voice, email, and more.
AlertsMA is used to send both statewide and targeted messages to employees and contractors. This includes geo-targeted or location-specific messages. The following are examples of the types of AlertsMA notifications sent to Commonwealth employees and contractors in FY21/FY22:
Weather situations - Including 200K+ emails, phone calls, and/or texts sent by the Human Resources Division to staff who were ordered not to report to their work location due to severe weather.
Vaccine attestation - Including ~50K+ emails, phone calls, and/or texts reminding staff to complete their online vaccine attestation form.
State House safety - Including ~1K+ emails, phone calls, and texts sent by the Bureau of the State House with building entry and exit instructions during protests/demonstrations. In addition to Executive Branch employees and contractors, other people who work in the Massachusetts State House can also opt-in anonymously to receive safety alerts.
Emergency Management - Including numerous messages sent each month by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency to both agency staff and external partners about statewide emergency operations, dispatch shifts, wireless emergency alerts, and more.
The power of this messaging platform was leveraged to bolster the Commonwealth’s COVID-19 communications strategy, which is highlighted in this report under “COVID-19 Response and Recovery,” in the following ways:
messaging statewide COVID-19 instruction and guidance;
delivering community-specific communications;
providing eviction support messaging in support of DHCD;
following up with the vaccine waitlist; and,
launching public-based keywords to ensure the public was aware of the evolving COVID-19 guidance and travel restrictions.
Going forward, the Commonwealth plans to continue to use AlertsMA to send critical communications to help protect the lives and property of citizens, visitors, and business across Massachusetts. Residents can use the AlertsMA resident portal www.mass.gov/alertsma-for-residents to subscribe to receive notifications in their preferred communication method and language.
| Date published: | May 10, 2022 |
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| Last updated: | May 10, 2022 |