Citizens Property Insurance Information Systems Advisory Committee Recommends Board Approval of Information Technology Expenditures

 

After hearing status reports on several Information Technology (“IT”) projects at its meeting today, August 22, 2012, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (“Citizens”) Information Systems Advisory Committee (“Committee”) recommended several pending expenditures related to the consolidation of its Data Center operations for approval by Citizens Board of Governors (“Board”) at its next meeting on September 7, 2012.

To view the meeting materials, click here.

Citizens is planning to consolidate its Data Center operations from three sites to two, with one for production in Jacksonville, Florida, and another dedicated to disaster recovery in Tampa.  The implementation involves the consolidation of equipment and services from multiple existing data centers to one site supporting production and test-development, and one disaster recovery site.

The purchases reviewed at today’s meeting relate directly to the Data Center consolidation.

Included in the recommendations for Board approval was an additional $4.3 million for staff augmentation and temporary staffing contracts combined.

The Board had previously approved $19.6 million for IT and Core staff augmentation.  The Committee requested an additional $3.5 million for staff augmentation, for a total of $23.1 million.

The Committee also recommended that the Board spend an additional $800,000 for temporary staffing contracts.

The Board had previously approved a sum of $700,000 for temporary staffing contracts.  With the additional funding, the total sum for temporary staffing would be $1.5 million.

In other business, the Committee recommended that the Board approve spending $720,000 for migration planning services with CSX Technology Inc.  related to relocating the existing Data Center.  Included in the planning process are discovery, analysis and sequencing of the data center activities, a complex mix of duties that are costly and highly involved, it was noted.

Citizens would be using the existing CSX Technology contract for migration planning services.

The Committee could not recommend the following two items for approval because there was no longer a quorum when they came up for discussion:

• A $950,000 expenditure for servers, storage and network issues
• A $340,000 expenditure for desktop hardware and software to accommodate Citizens’ ongoing business needs

Committee Chairman John Rollins, also a Board member, assured he would mention in his report to the full Board next month that the items could not be formally recommended for approval due to lack of a quorum. 

With no other business before the Committee, the meeting was adjourned.

 

 

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