Department of Commerce

Goals

Update: The security practices at Department of Commerce follow the advice, guidance, and tools of SITSD.

Objectives

  • Continue to mature our security plans for those business functions or systems most at risk.
    Update: Our housing division is advancing it's PII policies.
  • Continue to engage each employee as an active member of our team in securing our environment and resources.
    Update: The intranet site has a dedicated section for security and all updates are communicated to employees through email, teams, and intranet. Cybersecurity training is also closely monitored and promoted.
  • Take advantage of resources made available to the Department that aid in implementing a multi front defense to cyber threats.
    Update: The agency takes advantage of all items available via SITSD and has implemented Sentinel One on all state workstations/laptops.
  • Increase participation in periodic disaster recovery testing and exercises.
    Update: While we did not increase our disaster recovery testing, we have been testing different technologies that allowed us to quickly set up individuals for pandemic work from home efforts.

Update: Members of Department of Commerce regularly collaborate with other agencies in hardware and software.

Objectives

  • Stay aware of new enterprise services that may provide cost effective solutions to existing and emerging problems.
    Update: During the last biennium, DOC researched and expanded use of electronic content management. That was put on hold as the enterprise solution was changing. We will be expanding our use once migration to the new solution is completed.
  • Engage with other agencies to share technologies or services that have been discovered and to adopt best practices that have been proven elsewhere.
    Update: The organization regularly attends the cross agency meetings to gain insight from other agencies and their technology uses. Additionally, we interact and utilize cross agency connections with electronic content management, web development, GIS, and other applications.
  • Continue to implement additional work flows within the Enterprise Content Management system to more efficiently manage our documents and reduce processing times.
    Update: This was put on hold as the ECM solution was migrating. At this time, we are evaluating which processes would work better in ServiceNow vs ECM.
  • Evaluate the Unified Digital Workspace service for use within Commerce. Evaluate enterprise service management system as a replacement for the existing TrackIT management system. Evaluate web site tools to improve content management, ease of use, accessibility and mobility.
    Update: Members of the IT team have tested the Unified Digital Workspace. While there are some job responsibilities that work well with UDW, the majority of team members are using laptops and VPN.

    Regarding the enterprise solution to replace TrackIT, DOC has migrated to ServiceNow for incident management. Asset tracking is needed to completely replace TrackIt, and that is targeted for next biennium.
  • Evaluate the use of eMACs as the standard within Commerce for our grants and procurements management or expand usage of the multiagency web grants portal.
    Update: Our financial team researched eMACs for procurement management but it could not fit all of our contract needs, so the agency is currently staying with the enterprise ECM solution.

Update: Many within the agency have switched to OneDrive and/or MS Teams when collaborating both internally and externally. Due to industry standards in marketing and film areas, they are still utilizing other tools.

Objectives

  • Evaluate and implement products such as MS Teams, Teamwork, Basecamp, Slack, etc. to provide more efficient tools to manage the information resources of our dynamic and specialized teams.
    Update: The agency is now using MS Teams to manage content and collaborate with others. This has been beneficial to team members as they've been working from home in the last few months of the biennium.
  • Contribute to the improvement of the enterprise content management system and associated analytical tools or identify and pursue alternatives that will meet our needs.
    Update: When SITSD provided the options of Perceptive Cloud vs IBM DBA, we did a full requirements identification and determined that DBA would meet our needs the best. At the end of the biennium, we are in the process of migrating to DBA.
  • Identify and implement web analytical tool(s) that meet our needs in managing our large and diverse web presence and public communication foot print.
    Update: We implemented a product from Monsido for a period of time to get web analytics. Once Google analytics was approved for agency use, we compared functionality and price, and we switched to Google analytics. We are now using it for all of our web reporting needs.
  • Identify and implement email and texting communication tools that can communicate with both internal and external constituents to reach and measure the success of our marketing campaigns.
    Update: Our communication department is using Granicus for email and text communications, and our tourism department is in the process of implementing a communication tool with their existing tourism information request system.
  • Update/replace existing conference room equipment to ensure effective and efficient meetings.
    Update: Board of Investments has updated their board room, two small conference rooms and two offices with A/V equipment that will better meet their needs for something with quality and ease of use. Other division meeting rooms have had various updates in screens and phones.

Update: Several tools have already been implemented and others are in the progress of implementation. Details are in the objectives below.

Objectives

  • Evaluate and implement a portfolio management tool for Montana Facility Finance. Complete Board of Investments project to replace an aging Oracle based system with SQL.
    Update: Montana Facility Finance Authority has implemented Salesforce to track their portfolio. What used to take them several days to generate a required report now takes just a matter of a few minutes. The Board of Investments migration to SQL had some roadblocks and has been replaced with Excel while determining a long term solution.
  • Continue to implement emerging tools such as Workiva/wDesk, Tableau, and Moodle/Moonami through team member education and integration in the work processes for our business units.
    Update: Various divisions have adopted some enterprise tools. Housing has been using Workiva; Tourism and Business Development has been using Tableau. All areas have adopted Teams and Zoom. We also began using ServiceNow and looking for it to fulfill more digital workflow capabilities.
  • Evaluate and consider any/all alternatives to the Adobe family of software products. Evaluate Gov2Go, AccessGov and other eForms products as an alternative to existing internet technology tools.
    Update: Commerce is no longer using Adobe fillable forms and has migrated to AccessGov for online forms.
  • Evaluate and implement, as appropriate, tools, services or resources that meet our unique needs that may not be available as an Enterprise service. Research bulk digital storage options to address our video needs.
    Update: The agency has needs that don't fit enterprise solutions. For example, the film office facilitates the movie studios to film in Montana. They are using ReelScout. Our tourism department has a need to manage Montana images and are using WebDam for that purpose.

Agency Contact Information

Agency Director / Administrator
Tara Rice
406.841.2745
tara.rice@mt.gov
PO Box 200501, Helena, MT 59620-0501
Information Technology Contact
(CIO / IT Manager)
Angie Riley
406.841.2705
angie.riley@mt.gov
PO Box 200501, Helena, MT 59620-0501
Information Security Manager
Terry Meagher
406.841.2722
tmeagher@mt.gov
PO Box 200501, Helena, MT 59620-0501