Texas Department of Information Resources Supports Agencies With Cloud Power

Embracing Public Cloud to Enable Innovation

The department has evolved its services over time to include technology strategy and design services, application development, and managed security services. In 2017, DIR began offering public cloud services, starting with Azure and AWS, and recently added Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud. The goals are to avoid vendor lock-in, which limits technology choice, and provide access to the latest innovations and best-of-breed solutions.

“Texas is a big state, and we have a lot of government entities with varying missions. At DIR, we strive to always offer our customer agencies the choice of what would be best for their applications and ultimately, what would be the best value for Texans and the taxpayers of this state,” Crawford says.

Through the DCS program, public cloud use has climbed to 30% since 2017, with private cloud at 70%, Ward says. The program now serves 121 state and local government agencies and educational institutions, including 29 state agencies that are required by law to participate and 18 others that have joined voluntarily.

Agencies are increasingly adopting public cloud to modernize or build new applications, taking advantage of Platform as a Service and the ability to scale services up or down as needed, Ward says.

DIR offers four public cloud services to give agencies choice, because no two clouds are the same, she says. Their choices are based on the best fit for their application or their existing expertise.

“There are business and technology reasons why one platform would be better for a particular need,” Ward says. “It could be that an agency is an AWS shop or an Azure shop. That’s what they know, and that’s what they want to keep using.”

Modernizing Applications to Improve Public Services

The Office of the Texas Secretary of State uses DIR’s traditional data center services but has also adopted AWS, Azure and other public cloud services to modernize applications, says Dan Teczar, the office’s CIO.

“The economies of scale we achieve through DIR with the buying power of the state is a great resource, especially for a smaller agency like the Secretary of State’s office,” he says. “In addition to cost, we benefit greatly from the contract vehicles, services and expertise offered by DIR’s internal staff and vendor partners.”

The agency took advantage of DIR resources when it recently modernized its Texas Register and Notary Public applications in the public cloud, resulting in more streamlined business operations and better customer service, Teczar says.

The SoS modernized its 30-year-old Texas Register system, where agencies publish public notices and new rules, using a cloud-native, low-code platform hosted in AWS.

The new Texas Register application cut editorial preparation time by up to 75%, reduced security vulnerabilities by 70% throughout the agency and allowed the public to see rule updates almost immediately, Teczar says.

SoS also modernized its Notary Public software, making 95% of filings paperless and saving staff over 700 hours per month through automation.

Overall, public cloud services have enabled the Secretary of State’s office to pursue digital transformation that delivers faster, smarter services, Teczar says.

“By combining modern tools, inclusive engagement and relentless focus on public value, we are turning outdated processes into high-performing digital services that restore trust and reduce burden,” he says.

READ MORE: Modernize aging IT infrastructure in the public sector.

Scaling Resources Across Departments

Texas Health and Human Services (HHS), which provides IT services for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) and the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), migrated to the DIR DCS program in 2007 and began utilizing public cloud services in 2019.

DSHS chooses public cloud services based on individual application requirements, primarily using AWS (with a smaller presence in Azure), while also using DIR’s private cloud resources. Before the 2007 DCS migration, HHS mostly used on-premises data centers operated by the Texas Facilities Commission.

The DCS program’s public and private cloud services offer advantages over traditional data centers. Both cloud options use a pay-as-you-go model that can provide cost efficiencies.

Because the program’s management structure (which includes private cloud operations and the DCS public cloud manager) handles maintenance and updates, HHS IT staff have more time to focus on core business activities, an HHS spokesperson says.

“With the cloud platforms’ scalable, flexible and agile resources, HHS can quickly adjust capacity based on demand, make timely system changes and reduce downtime,” the HHS spokesperson says. “The platforms also offer higher performance, reliability, built-in disaster recovery, and tools and infrastructure for superior security controls.”

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Building Data Center Services

To manage this hybrid environment, DIR has contracted with a multisourcing services integrator that oversees vendors and cloud companies and provides overall governance. DIR uses reference architectures to optimize cloud operations, ensuring each public cloud environment is deployed consistently and securely and meets industry best practices.

“Reference architectures are established to ensure standards and compliance. Customers don’t have to create them,” Ward says. “Health checks are run. Vulnerabilities are managed. All of this is tightly controlled to ensure that we minimize – as much as we can – the opportunity for a breach.”

Public cloud deployments include financial controls to prevent cost overruns. Agency leaders must approve projects and set cost limits. Agencies are notified if they reach a spending threshold, she says.

Previously, state agency leaders were reluctant to fully embrace public cloud, but these operational, security and financial controls have addressed their concerns, prompting increased adoption, Ward says.

To deploy public cloud services, agencies submit a ServiceNow ticket with their requirements, Ward says.

A vendor that serves as the state’s public cloud manager holds a joint application development session with the agency. The vendor scopes out the architecture, Platform or Infrastructure as a Service options, and storage requirements. The public cloud manager creates a cost proposal, and upon approval, spins up the cloud services and turns it over to the agency for testing and final sign-off, Ward says.

Agencies that want to use a private cloud go through a similar process. They submit a ticket with their requirements and automatically spin up virtual instances. DIR uses a variety of technologies in its data centers and most recently began deploying Dell PowerFlex hyperconverged infrastructure.

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“It’s very much like what you would see in the public cloud: very easy and not laborious,” Ward says.

Texas’s shared services for public and private cloud offerings are a smart strategy that eliminates government waste, says IDC Analyst Ashish Nadkarni.

DIR’s use of reference architectures provides a standardized blueprint for implementing infrastructure and applications, which eliminates one-off implementations that can be costly and difficult to manage, and that could potentially create security vulnerabilities, he says.

“Creating a reference architecture makes it more cookie-cutter, makes it more scalable,” Nadkarni says. “It takes the guesswork out, streamlines implementation of services and eases the burden on administration and IT teams.”

Satisfying Statewide Demand

Ward expects the current 70-30 split between private and public cloud to even out slowly in the future, possibly reaching 50-50 in the next decade.

Overall, DIR’s IT leaders feel the state’s data center consolidation and mix of private and public cloud services have been successful. State, local and educational institutions spent $546 million in data center services in fiscal 2024, with 97% customer satisfaction, Crawford says.

The technical piece is huge, but change management and relationship management are also critical, she says.

“We hit 100% customer satisfaction for many months. But we did not start out that way,” Crawford says. “It came through a lot of hard work, and it continues to be a lot of hard work. We’re continually evolving our program, so that we can be ahead of the curve and meet the needs of where Texas is going and where technology is going.”