BILL NUMBER: S8870

SPONSOR: COMRIE
 
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to require the director of information technology services to
undertake a detailed study of the comparative qualities of cloud comput-
ing services and state data center operations

 
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:

Requires the director of information technology services to undertake a
detailed study of the comparative qualities of cloud computing services
and state data center operations

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 1 sets the parameters for the study information technology
services is to conduct.

Section 2 states this act shall take effect immediately.
              

 
JUSTIFICATION:

Governments around the world, including the smallest local governments,
are increasingly concerned with ongoing technology investments they need
to make to provide services to their constituents. Are they secure
enough? Do they protect the privacy of their constituents? Are we capa-
ble of managing these investments on our own? What are the most cost
effective ways to make these investments? These are the questions all
government officials executives, commissioners, legislators and IT deci-
sion makers - are asking and will continue to ask moving forward. They
should be asking themselves those questions, asking independent experts
those questions, and asking the vendor community those questions.
Answering those questions in a vacuum cannot and will not yield the
breadth and depth of answers necessary for government officials to make
the right decisions. This bill will merely require the Office of Infor-
mation Technology. Services (CITS) to procure an independent, third
party study of these issues with a particular focus on comparing the
ongoing use and investment in a State-run data center with leveraging
investments in hyper scale or massive data centers built and managed by
companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, and Microsoft to name a
few.  It goes without question that NYS cannot match the economies of
scale companies like that achieve with investments in data centers
across the United States and around the world, but just how much of an
advantage do they have? Is it unreasonable for the State to continue
making investments in its own data center operations or are there other
advantages the State has that offset a lack of economies of scale? Which
approach is more secure? Which approach protects the privacy of constit-
uents better? Which approach provides the State with better compliance
with national data security standards and requirements such as those
required by Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Criminal Justice
Information Services (CJIS), and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Publica-
tion 107 5? These are the questions the study contemplated by this bill
will answer and those answers will help guide OITS on future decisions
and the Legislature on future policy considerations

 
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
N/A.

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:

To be determined.

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
Effective immediately.