Governor Jim Gibbons announced significant progress in the Nevada Shared Information Technology Services and Infrastructure (NSITS) project today.  “A significant milestone has been met with formal acceptance of a governance model for the operation of a collaborative, cross-jurisdictional information technology infrastructure.  This collaborative will leverage existing infrastructure and future funding to continue to make governmental services available to Nevadans in the most efficient, most secure manner possible,” Governor Gibbons said.

The collaborative is composed of representatives from Clark County, the City of Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the State of Nevada.  The intent of the NSITS collaborative is to share information resources between governmental entities to support disaster recovery, public safety and continuity of operations initiatives as well as to provide opportunities of economies, efficiencies and scalability for all participating entities.

Governor Gibbons said, “This initiative is consistent with my efforts to consolidate information technology within the State of Nevada as well as to build cooperative Fusion Centers.  Security and continuity of operations of this state are of utmost importance in the wake of disasters such the recent fires in California or Hurricane Katrina.  Collaboration allows us to protect the critical infrastructure and information of state and local governments that otherwise would not be feasible for individual entities.”

Director of the Department of Information and Technology Daniel Stockwell said, “The governance model is the foundation necessary to move forward with collaborative projects.”  The governance model provides guidance for the submission of projects for potential collaboration as well as a structure to execute those projects.

This project is one of the first of its kind, promising real value to the citizens of Nevada through cooperation between information technology and records management entities throughout the state.  Additionally, the collaborative approach should allow local governments with strained information technology resources to leverage assets and infrastructure already deployed by larger entities within the state.

“The shared-use approach has the potential of providing economies in systems procurement, efficiencies in operations and scalability (easy expandability) for all participants,” said Joe Marcella, CIO for the City of Las Vegas.  “From another viewpoint, this will maximize the information resource investment and reduce overlapping technology assets.”

“The acceptance of the governance model by the participants represents over two years of discussion, formal analysis and collaboration.  Future opportunities for NSITS include items such as enterprise licensing, infrastructure virtualization, master pricing agreements for IT equipment, software and services, and shared data center resources.  These opportunities represent only a subset of the possibilities of this type of initiative.    The fruits of this labor are yet to come,” said Daniel Goggiano, Deputy Chief of Computing, State of Nevada.

In accordance with the adopted governance model, an Executive Steering Committee has been named as follows:

                   Gary Buonacorsi, Deputy Director, Nevada Department of Information Technology
                   Joseph Marcella, Chief Information Officer, City of Las Vegas
                   Laura Fucci, Chief Information Officer, Clark County
                   Phil Roland, Division Director, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department

For more information please contact the following:

                   Daniel Goggiano, State of Nevada, 775-684-4306
                   Dan Walker, Clark County, 702-455-4110
                   Joseph Santilli, City of Las Vegas, 702-229-2410
                   Phil Roland, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, 702-828-5536