Company: Virginia Information Technology Agency, Chester, VA
Company Description: The Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) is the Commonwealth's consolidated information technology organization. VITA is a unique organization, pioneering a 21st century model for information technology governance and operational excellence. The creation of VITA represents the most comprehensive reform of state government information technology in the nation.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Categories - Software
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Software - Asset Management Solution

Nomination Title: Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA) Asset Management Solution

Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 650 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date:

In 2005, the Commonwealth of Virginia (CoV) and Northrop Grumman formed the largest public-private information technology (IT) program in the nation. The IT infrastructure program resulted in a 13-year investment to transform Virginia's IT infrastructure. VITA, providing oversight for the commonwealth, and Northrop Grumman modernized the state’s IT infrastructure and provided the expertise and resources needed to improve government services and deliver state-of-the-art technologies for the benefit of state agencies and citizens.

VITA’s asset management is comprised of the following areas:

• Establishing and maintaining automated and manual asset management systems and processes
• Maintaining IT asset status and associated data within the asset management system and its interfaces with other service operations
• Asset tracking and data quality control in conformance to the asset tracking service-level agreement

In 2014, VITA and Northrop Grumman implemented the VMware Service Manager (VSM), which provided advanced functionality and service, and a-user friendly ticketing and communication process to customers throughout CoV.

VSM is the IT service management system used for recording service requests, incidents, problem/known error and change management records. It is integrated with asset and configuration management data. The VSM system replaced the previous asset management system -- HP ServiceCenter. In September 2014, Northrop Grumman heightened service improvements throughout the CoV program with the implementation of VSM v9.1.7, which automates the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework. VSM v9.1.7 allows the program to deliver higher quality of service, react quicker when issues arise and perform improved service asset trending analysis.

In November 2014, the ITIL framework gained the highest scores* from internal audits relating to the following ITIL processes:

• Incident management – 5
• Change/release management – 5
• Service asset and configuration management – 5

*ITIL Maturity Index rating – based on the globally accepted Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)

State agencies that are in-scope to the IT Infrastructure program with Northrop Grumman, work through the VITA Customer Care Center (VCCC) service desk. The service desk is responsible for end-to-end ownership (e.g., logging, tracking, resolution and reporting) of records related to service and support. Incidents and service requests are resolved by service desk staff or escalated to specialized entities for resolution, such as on-site support, enterprise engineering and technical support services. These groups manage all incidents and service requests, as well as change, problem, asset and configuration records, using an IT Service Management (ITSM) System.

The asset system, in conjunction with the help desk systems, also stores software license, asset warranty, maintenance and associated problem history data that assist in proactively reducing end-user disruption by identifying problematic equipment. Northrop Grumman manages assets through the entire life cycle, from forecasting and acquisition to retirement, including leasing, maintenance, warranty, contract management and cost allocation, thus facilitating the capture of financial data associated with the asset and providing customers with a web-based application to view asset inventory information.

As part of VITA’s overall IT infrastructure program, IT asset management has helped Virginia progress in securing sensitive information and assets specifically related to disaster recovery. Disaster recovery testing is performed on an annual basis. This testing simulates a natural disaster at the Commonwealth Enterprise Solutions Center (CESC) south of Richmond, VA, and is backed up at the Southwest Enterprise Solutions Center (SWESC) in southwest Virginia to ensure important information held by state agencies is secure and accessible in the event of a disaster. This is actual recovery testing, not a tabletop exercise, and Virginia is believed to be the only state in the country that executes a full disaster recovery drill. The most recent test took place in August 2014 and simulated a sinkhole. Within 53 hours of the declared disaster, the disaster recovery team had all 18 agencies up and running.

In bullet-list form, briefly summarize up to ten (10) of the chief features and benefits of the nominated product or service.

The VSM provides the following benefits:

• Communication through VSM: Using the user-friendly VSM, customers can receive ticket notifications and communicate with their assigned engineer.
• Customer portal: In addition to emailing or calling the VCCC, customers can open, view and update tickets through the customer portal web ticket logging form. Logging a ticket through the customer portal provides an immediate ticket number. Customers also have the option of providing comments and feedback after a service has been completed. The customer portal is accessible to more than 60,000 customers.
• Configuration Management Database (CMDB): The CMDB is part of VSM and where asset management is managed.

Asset management provides VITA on behalf of the commonwealth:

• Management of more than 180,000 assets across the state
• Streamlined service asset bulk upload process
• Ability to create custom views on specific service assets or asset types
• Streamlined service asset audit trail
• Ability to create, track and assign