M E M O R A N D U M
TO: Governor, Cabinet Members, Elected Officials, Chief Justice, Agency Heads
FROM: James Collins, CIO
DATE: April 30, 2019
SUBJECT: Microsoft Office 365 Update

Happy Spring, Everyone!
The following serves as an update on the great progress made this past quarter with the Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise Implementation Project and a brief summary of upcoming milestones:

• January – all State of Delaware email addresses were updated to @delaware.gov.
• February/March – a group of DTI Early Adopters were first to migrate followed by two successively larger “waves” of DTI staff migration. With each wave, lessons learned were documented to mitigate challenges during the larger migrations. As of March 27th, all DTI staff have been migrated to Exchange Online (EXO) and have had Office 365 ProPlus (OPP) deployed.
• March – Agency Change Liaisons were tasked to identify approximately 10% of your teams to participate as Early Adopters. Upon engagement with each agency, the Early Adopter staff members will be the first to experience EXO and OPP.
• April 2nd – Office 365 Enterprise Governance/Center of Excellence (COE) held an initial meeting. The COE will enable adoption of O365 Cloud Services to foster increased collaboration and innovation across State government. Its first task: develop a foundational model to rollout services across different agencies.
• April to December – the Office 365 project team will engage with each agency to deploy OPP and migrate mail to EXO based on specific agency criteria gleaned during the assessment.

Awareness and communication of information about the Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise Implementation Project is vital for success. The project team developed an implementation roadmap predicated on active involvement from each agency to share agency nuances, further define the timeline and enable successful deployment. We greatly appreciate the engagement from your teams and your continued support of this significant initiative.
Feel free to contact me with any questions.

You can also visit the project website at https://office365.delaware.gov.

M E M O R A N D U M

TO:                          Governor, Cabinet Members, Elected Officials, Chief Justice, Agency Heads

FROM:                     James Collins, CIO Department of Technology and Information

DATE:                      November 20, 2018

SUBJECT:                 Microsoft Office 365 Transition Update

 

As a follow-up to our previous announcement, I would like to update you on the State’s enterprise-wide move to Office 365. The project kicked off with a well-attended statewide meeting at Del Tech in mid-September.  The related major initiative to migrate from our legacy email domain address extension of @delaware.gov to @delaware.gov was conveyed to all in attendance.

Based on research of other States who have made this transition and our work with Microsoft subject matter experts, we believe it will be less disruptive and a more seamless transition to Office 365 if we pursue a switch of our email domain in the current on-premises email solution, rather than incremental changes (agency-by-agency) as was initially considered. Here is what you need to know:

• The change is necessary because the “.gov” suffix is strictly reserved for government use only; “.us” lacks that verification;
• The change aligns with the state’s public branding used for almost all state top level web presence  –  https://governor.delaware.gov/  https://AgencyName.delaware.gov/;
• Forwarding from legacy @delaware.gov addresses to the new email addresses will continue to work with no set deadline to end in the foreseeable future (there is no cost associated with forwarding) thus allowing agencies time to use up existing printed materials and update email addresses on printed materials when ready for normal replenishment;
• Once the transition to @delaware.gov occurs, updates to state websites and online systems where full email address is used can begin
• Switchover will occur early in 2019 Q1 while all email is still in the legacy state-hosted systems prior to migrating any email accounts to O365; and,
• DTI IT technical staff are working with your support staff to minimize the likelihood of disruptions to processes with email dependencies. They will need all agency cooperation to make this a successful change statewide.

The DTI Organizational Change Management team is actively working with change liaisons from all your agencies to identify critical dependencies on the @delaware.gov email address this month. Please support this effort by encouraging your staff to make this a priority. Please reach out if you have any questions.

 

DTI CIO Provides Office 365 Transition Update – PDF Version

M E M O R A N D U M

 

TO: Governor, Cabinet Members, Elected Officials, Chief Justice, Agency Heads

FROM: James Collins, CIO Department of Technology and Information

DATE: July 11, 2018

SUBJECT: Microsoft Office 365 Transition Initiative

 

This memorandum is intended to make you aware of a significant change in how the Department of Technology and Information (DTI) will deliver email and productivity solutions. DTI worked together with Gartner, Inc. from April 2017 to September 2017 to assess whether the State should refresh its current email environment or consider cloud options offered by Microsoft and Google. The study collected State agencies’ requirements, preferences, capabilities, and concerns regarding a transition to cloud services for email and productivity tools. Representatives from the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches were engaged and all provided input through working sessions and a comprehensive survey. The resulting recommendation from Gartner was for the State, to adopt Microsoft Office 365 including the Advanced Threat Protection module for additional security protection. It was determined that this change would reduce risk, increase collaboration and support the mobile workforce of the future. Over the past several months, DTI, OMB and Microsoft took a holistic view of the State’s Microsoft expenditures and were able to negotiate through expired licensing, contract terms, potential penalties related to licensing compliance, and agreed on a contract to transition 21,000 users to Office 365 government plans. With the approval of the FY19 State Bond Bill, the additional funding required to transition has been appropriated through the Technology Fund. The Office 365 implementation will transition all State organizations and must be supported by the highest levels of government. Administration, configuration and data access will be limited to State IT staff as it is today. As part of this effort, the DTI Organizational Change Management (OCM) Team will be reaching out to your agency IRM’s to assist with identifying your specific point of contacts for the transition to attend upcoming kick-off meetings. Active involvement from each agency will enable a complete and successful implementation. We appreciate your support of this significant initiative.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

DTI CIO Announces O365 Transition Initiative July 2018 – PDF Version