282.203 Primary data centers.
282.203 Primary data centers.
(1) DATA CENTER DUTIES. Each primary data center shall:
(a) Serve customer entities as an information-system utility.
(b) Cooperate with customer entities to offer, develop, and support the services and applications as defined and provided by the center’s board of trustees and customer entities.
(c) Comply with rules adopted by the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology, pursuant to this section, and coordinate with the agency in the consolidation of data centers.
(d) Provide transparent financial statements to customer entities, the center’s board of trustees, and the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology. The financial statements shall be provided as follows:
1. Annually, by July 30 for the current fiscal year and by December 1 for the subsequent fiscal year, the data center must provide the total annual budgeted costs by major expenditure category, including, but not limited to, salaries, expense, operating capital outlay, contracted services, or other personnel services, which directly relate to the provision of each service and which separately indicate the administrative overhead allocated to each service.
2. Annually, by July 30 for the current fiscal year and by December 1 for the subsequent fiscal year, the data center must provide total projected billings for each customer entity which are required to recover the costs of the data center.
3. Annually, by January 31, the data center must provide updates of the financial statements required under subparagraphs 1. and 2. for the current fiscal year.
4. By February 15, for proposed legislative budget increases, the data center must provide updates of the financial statements required under subparagraphs 1. and 2. for the subsequent fiscal year.
The financial information required under subparagraphs 1., 2., and 3. must be based on current law and current appropriations.
(e) Annually, by October 1, submit to the board of trustees cost-reduction proposals, including strategies and timetables for lowering customer entities’ costs without reducing the level of services.
(f) By December 31, 2010, submit organizational plans that minimize the annual recurring cost of center operations and eliminate the need for state agency customers to maintain data center skills and staff within their agency. The plans shall:
1. Establish an efficient organizational structure describing the roles and responsibilities of all positions and business units in the centers;
2. Define a human resources planning and management process that shall be used to make required center staffing decisions; and
3. Develop a process for projecting staffing requirements based on estimated workload identified in customer agency service level agreements.
(g) Maintain the performance of the facility, which includes ensuring proper data backup, data backup recovery, an effective disaster recovery plan, and appropriate security, power, cooling and fire suppression, and capacity.
(h) Develop a business continuity plan and conduct a live exercise of the plan at least annually. The plan must be approved by the board and the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology.
(i) Enter into a service-level agreement with each customer entity to provide services as defined and approved by the board in compliance with rules of the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology. A service-level agreement may not have a term exceeding 3 years but may include an option to renew for up to 3 years contingent on approval by the board.
1. A service-level agreement, at a minimum, must:
a. Identify the parties and their roles, duties, and responsibilities under the agreement;
b. Identify the legal authority under which the service-level agreement was negotiated and entered into by the parties;
c. State the duration of the contractual term and specify the conditions for contract renewal;
d. Prohibit the transfer of computing services between primary data center facilities without at least 180 days’ notice of service cancellation;
e. Identify the scope of work;
f. Identify the products or services to be delivered with sufficient specificity to permit an external financial or performance audit;
g. Establish the services to be provided, the business standards that must be met for each service, the cost of each service, and the process by which the business standards for each service are to be objectively measured and reported;
h. Identify applicable funds and funding streams for the services or products under contract;
i. Provide a timely billing methodology for recovering the cost of services provided to the customer entity;
j. Provide a procedure for modifying the service-level agreement to address changes in projected costs of service;
k. Provide that a service-level agreement may be terminated by either party for cause only after giving the other party and the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology notice in writing of the cause for termination and an opportunity for the other party to resolve the identified cause within a reasonable period; and
l. Provide for mediation of disputes by the Division of Administrative Hearings pursuant to s. 120.573.
2. A service-level agreement may include:
a. A dispute resolution mechanism, including alternatives to administrative or judicial proceedings;
b. The setting of a surety or performance bond for service-level agreements entered into with nonstate agency primary data centers, which may be designated by the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology; or
c. Additional terms and conditions as determined advisable by the parties if such additional terms and conditions do not conflict with the requirements of this section or rules adopted by the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology.
3. The failure to execute a service-level agreement within 60 days after service commencement shall, in the case of an existing customer entity, result in a continuation of the terms of the service-level agreement from the prior fiscal year, including any amendments that were formally proposed to the customer entity by the primary data center within the 3 months before service commencement, and a revised cost-of-service estimate. If a new customer entity fails to execute an agreement within 60 days after service commencement, the data center may cease services.
(j) Plan, design, establish pilot projects for, and conduct experiments with information technology resources, and implement enhancements in services if such implementation is cost-effective and approved by the board.
(k) Enter into a memorandum of understanding with the agency where the data center is administratively located which establishes the services to be provided by that agency to the data center and the cost of such services.
(l) Be the custodian of resources and equipment that are located, operated, supported, and managed by the center for the purposes of chapter 273.
(2) BOARD OF TRUSTEES. Each primary data center shall be headed by a board of trustees as defined in s. 20.03.
(a) The members of the board shall be appointed by the agency head or chief executive officer of the representative customer entities of the primary data center and shall serve at the pleasure of the appointing customer entity.
1. For each of the first 2 fiscal years that a center is in operation, membership shall be as provided in subparagraph 3. based on projected customer entity usage rates for the fiscal operating year of the primary data center. However, at a minimum:
a. During the Southwood Shared Resource Center’s first 2 operating years, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, the Department of Health, and the Department of Revenue must each have at least one trustee.
b. During the Northwood Shared Resource Center’s first operating year, the Department of State and the Department of Education must each have at least one trustee.
2. After the second full year of operation, membership shall be as provided in subparagraph 3. based on the most recent estimate of customer entity usage rates for the prior year and a projection of usage rates for the first 9 months of the next fiscal year. Such calculation must be completed before the annual budget meeting held before the beginning of the next fiscal year so that any decision to add or remove board members can be voted on at the budget meeting and become effective on July 1 of the subsequent fiscal year.
3. Each customer entity that has a projected usage rate of 4 percent or greater during the fiscal operating year of the primary data center shall have one trustee on the board.
4. The total number of votes for each trustee shall be apportioned as follows:
a. Customer entities of a primary data center whose usage rate represents 4 but less than 15 percent of total usage shall have one vote.
b. Customer entities of a primary data center whose usage rate represents 15 but less than 30 percent of total usage shall have two votes.
c. Customer entities of a primary data center whose usage rate represents 30 but less than 50 percent of total usage shall have three votes.
d. A customer entity of a primary data center whose usage rate represents 50 percent or more of total usage shall have four votes.
e. A single trustee having one vote shall represent those customer entities that represent less than 4 percent of the total usage. The trustee shall be selected by a process determined by the board.
(b) Before July 1 of each year, each board of trustees of a primary data center shall elect a chair and a vice chair to a term of 1 year or until a successor is elected. The vice chair shall serve in the absence of the chair. The chair may be elected to serve one additional successive term.
(c) Members of the board representing customer entities who fail to timely pay for data center services do not have voting rights.
(d) A majority of the members constitutes a quorum. The board shall take action by a majority vote of the members if a quorum is present. If there is a tie, the chair shall be on the prevailing side.
(e) The executive director of the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology shall be the advisor to the board.
(f) To facilitate planned data center consolidations, board membership may be adjusted as provided in the General Appropriations Act.
(3) BOARD DUTIES. Each board of trustees of a primary data center shall:
(a) Employ an executive director, pursuant to s. 20.05, who serves at the pleasure of the board. The executive director is responsible for the daily operation of the primary data center, ensuring compliance with all laws and rules regulating the primary data center, managing primary data center employees, and the performance of the primary data center. The board shall establish an annual performance evaluation process for the executive director. The appointment of the executive director must be reconfirmed by the board biennially.
(b) Establish procedures for the primary data center to ensure that budgeting and accounting procedures, cost-recovery methodologies, and operating procedures are in compliance with laws governing the state data center system, rules adopted by the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology, and applicable federal regulations, including 2 C.F.R. part 225 and 45 C.F.R.
(c) Monitor the operation of the primary data center to ensure compliance by the executive director and employees with laws and rules governing the primary data center, and ensure that staff members are accountable for the performance of the primary data center.
(d) Provide each customer entity with full disclosure concerning plans for new, additional, or reduced service requirements, including expected achievable service levels and performance metrics.
(e) Ensure the sufficiency and transparency of the primary data center financial information by:
1. Establishing policies that ensure that cost-recovery methodologies, billings, receivables, expenditure, budgeting, and accounting data are captured and reported timely, consistently, accurately, and transparently and, upon adoption of rules by the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology, are in compliance with such rules.
2. Requiring execution of service-level agreements by the data center and each customer entity for services provided by the data center to the customer entity.
3. Requiring cost recovery for the full cost of services, including direct and indirect costs. The cost-recovery methodology must ensure that no service is subsidizing another service without an affirmative vote of approval by the customer entity providing the subsidy.
4. Establishing special assessments to fund expansions based on a methodology that apportions the assessment according to the proportional benefit to each customer entity.
5. Providing rebates to customer entities when revenues exceed costs and offsetting charges to those who have subsidized other customer entity costs based on actual prior year final expenditures. Rebates may be credited against future billings.
6. Approving all expenditures committing over $50,000 in a fiscal year.
7. Projecting costs and revenues at the beginning of the third quarter of each fiscal year through the end of the fiscal year. If in any given fiscal year the primary data center is projected to earn revenues that are below costs for that fiscal year after first reducing operating costs where possible, the board shall implement any combination of the following remedies to cover the shortfall:
a. The board may direct the primary data center to adjust current year chargeback rates through the end of the fiscal year to cover the shortfall. The rate adjustments shall be implemented using actual usage rate and billing data from the first three quarters of the fiscal year and the same principles used to set rates for the fiscal year.
b. The board may direct the primary data center to levy one-time charges on all customer entities to cover the shortfall. The one-time charges shall be implemented using actual usage rate and billing data from the first three quarters of the fiscal year and the same principles used to set rates for the fiscal year.
c. The customer entities represented by each board member may provide payments to cover the shortfall in proportion to the amounts each entity paid in the prior fiscal year.
(f) Meet as often as necessary, but not less than once per quarter, and hold the annual budget meeting between April 1 and June 30 of each year.
(g) Approve the portfolio of services offered by the data center.
(h) By July 1 of each year, submit to the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology proposed cost-recovery mechanisms and rate structures for all customer entities for the fiscal year including the cost-allocation methodology for administrative expenditures and the calculation of administrative expenditures as a percent of total costs.
(i) Consider energy-efficient products and their total cost of ownership when replacing, upgrading, or expanding:
1. Data center facilities, including, but not limited to, environmental, power, and control systems; and
2. Data center network, storage, and computer equipment. If the total cost of ownership, including initial acquisition cost, is estimated to be equal to or lower than existing infrastructure, technical specifications for energy-efficient products should be incorporated into the replacement, upgrade, or expansion planning and acquisition process.
(j) Maintain the capabilities of the primary data center’s facilities. Maintenance responsibilities include, but are not limited to, ensuring that adequate conditioned floor space, fire suppression, cooling, and power is in place; replacing aging equipment when necessary; and making decisions related to data center expansion and renovation, periodic upgrades, and improvements that are required to ensure the ongoing suitability of the facility as an enterprise data center consolidation site in the state data center system. To the extent possible, the board shall ensure that its approved annual cost-allocation plan recovers sufficient funds from its customers to provide for these needs pursuant to s. 282.201(2)(e).
(k) Coordinate with other primary data centers and the Agency for Enterprise Information Technology in order to consolidate purchases of goods and services and lower the cost of providing services to customer entities.
(l) Contract with other primary data centers for the provision of administrative services or with the agency within which the primary data center is housed, whichever is most cost-effective.
History. s. 9, ch. 2008-116; s. 9, ch. 2009-80; s. 3, ch. 2010-148.