This week marks the first week in which the House will be considering bills that have already been approved by the Senate. It is my responsibility to be the House Author for four Senate bills.
Senate Bill 794 is authored by Senator Clark Jolly and is a request bill from the Peppers Ranch located just west of Guthrie. Peppers Ranch serves as a foster care provider for DHS and requested the bill in order to provide transparency and openness to the analysis of the state adoption process. It would require that DHS report the number of unsuccessful adoptions that take place each year. This could be used as a tool to analyze and correct issues related to the adoption process. I will be presenting SB 794 before the House Human Services committee this week.
Senate Bill 980 is authored by Senator Glenn Coffee. It calls for the creation of a CIO to oversee the state's IT functions. Each year, state government has been spending $340,577,938 of your tax dollars on IT and telecommunications. This does not count the salaries of the hundreds of state employees who are assigned to IT departments. These IT functions are spread out on an agency-by-agency basis, with each agency capable of creating their own IT empire. Millions of taxpayer dollars could be saved each year if duplicated processes were eliminated and new technology was used to maximize speed and space. SB 980 seeks to put an end to this type of inefficiency. SB 980 has been assigned to the Government Modernization committee where it is set to receive a hearing next Monday.
Senate Bill 800 is authored by Senator Anthony Sykes and is an excellent strategy for preserving the integrity of the initiative and referendum process in Oklahoma. As you may be aware, the Oklahoma Constitution allows for the people to pass a petition in order to allow them to vote on issues that the Legislature refuses to take action on. This is how such important laws have been written as Oklahoma's term limit law and the Constitutional provision that makes it very hard for the Legislature to raise taxes without a vote of the people.
Unfortunately, the petition process can be thwarted by minor legal mistakes in the petition language that can sometimes cause it to be thrown out even after the petition organizers have gone to enormous effort to get the thousands of necessary signatures. As you might imagine, this serves as a disincentive for citizens to start a petition for fear that all their hard work would be wasted because of a minor mistake. SB 800 would require that a petition that does not have the necessary legal language can be thrown out before the petition is passed around for signatures. This way, everyone would be on the same page prior to the petition being considered.
Senate Joint Resolution 12 is authored by Senator Randy Brogden. It would allow the people to vote on placing term limits on statewide officials, limiting them to two terms in office. It is mirror legislation to my House version of statewide term limits which passed the House two weeks ago.
Both SB 800 and SJR 12 will be considered by the House Rules Committee where I have requested a hearing.
Showing posts with label senator glenn coffee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label senator glenn coffee. Show all posts
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Stopping your Vital Information from being at Risk
Knowing what you know about the ineffectiveness of the government, do you really trust the government to protect your most vital information?
This year, state government must cut state spending by about 600 million dollars (closer to 900 million, if you count spend that will be offset by previously mandated increases). This forces state leaders to enact needed reforms that should have occurred many years ago.
One of these reforms is the centralization of the state's massive and (up until now) rather chaotically managed information technology (IT) functions.
Each year, state government has been spending $340,577,938 of your hard-earned tax dollars on IT and telecommunications. This does not count the salaries of the hundreds of state employees who are assigned to IT departments. These IT functions are spread out on an agency-by-agency basis, with each agency capable of creating their own IT empire.
Can you imagine what would happen to a private business that did not efficiently coordinate the actions of a department that spent in excess of 340 million dollars?
This year I am working with Senate Pro Tem Glenn Coffee as the House author of his Senate Bill 980, and State Representative David Derby as the co-author of House Bill 1704 to craft a plan that will break down these barriers and allow for the direct coordination of state government IT functions.
The obvious reason for this reform is savings. Let's consider how much the state spends on energy costs associated with duplicative server capacity. While private businesses are taking advantage of cloud computing and blade servers with shared power sources, too many antiquated government servers are using too much energy. How much sense does it make for Agency A to use a different server system than Agency B when they easily use the same storage device? Millions of taxpayers dollars could probably be saved each year if duplicated servers were eliminated and new technology was used to maximize speed and space.
A second very important reason for reform is that of security. Today, government computers contain everything from your tax returns to your biometric description. State computer systems are constantly under attack from those who would like to steal this information. State officials must constantly guard against these attacks. One of the most frequent originators of these attacks is from Communist China, where there is no way for our law enforcement officials to bring those responsible to justice. The fact that the Chinese are working so hard to steal our information is very concerning. One of the more disturbing incidents includes the successful compromise about two years ago of a local law enforcement database known as OLETS, which Oklahoma law enforcement agencies use to access information pertinent to the security of our communities.
Under current state law, as is all too often the case in government, potential security issues must be mitigated through a long, complicated, multi-step bureaucratic process. In today's rapidly changing technology, we no longer have the luxury of letting a bureaucratic, slow-moving government put our vital information at risk.
Senate Bill 980 and House Bill 1704 are part of the agenda of both the House and Senate leadership and I have been honored to work with Senator Coffee and Representative Derby in advancing this important reform.
This year, state government must cut state spending by about 600 million dollars (closer to 900 million, if you count spend that will be offset by previously mandated increases). This forces state leaders to enact needed reforms that should have occurred many years ago.
One of these reforms is the centralization of the state's massive and (up until now) rather chaotically managed information technology (IT) functions.
Each year, state government has been spending $340,577,938 of your hard-earned tax dollars on IT and telecommunications. This does not count the salaries of the hundreds of state employees who are assigned to IT departments. These IT functions are spread out on an agency-by-agency basis, with each agency capable of creating their own IT empire.
Can you imagine what would happen to a private business that did not efficiently coordinate the actions of a department that spent in excess of 340 million dollars?
This year I am working with Senate Pro Tem Glenn Coffee as the House author of his Senate Bill 980, and State Representative David Derby as the co-author of House Bill 1704 to craft a plan that will break down these barriers and allow for the direct coordination of state government IT functions.
The obvious reason for this reform is savings. Let's consider how much the state spends on energy costs associated with duplicative server capacity. While private businesses are taking advantage of cloud computing and blade servers with shared power sources, too many antiquated government servers are using too much energy. How much sense does it make for Agency A to use a different server system than Agency B when they easily use the same storage device? Millions of taxpayers dollars could probably be saved each year if duplicated servers were eliminated and new technology was used to maximize speed and space.
A second very important reason for reform is that of security. Today, government computers contain everything from your tax returns to your biometric description. State computer systems are constantly under attack from those who would like to steal this information. State officials must constantly guard against these attacks. One of the most frequent originators of these attacks is from Communist China, where there is no way for our law enforcement officials to bring those responsible to justice. The fact that the Chinese are working so hard to steal our information is very concerning. One of the more disturbing incidents includes the successful compromise about two years ago of a local law enforcement database known as OLETS, which Oklahoma law enforcement agencies use to access information pertinent to the security of our communities.
Under current state law, as is all too often the case in government, potential security issues must be mitigated through a long, complicated, multi-step bureaucratic process. In today's rapidly changing technology, we no longer have the luxury of letting a bureaucratic, slow-moving government put our vital information at risk.
Senate Bill 980 and House Bill 1704 are part of the agenda of both the House and Senate leadership and I have been honored to work with Senator Coffee and Representative Derby in advancing this important reform.
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