State CIO outlines EIS priorities: cybersecurity, cloud strategy, data-center resiliency and project governance

State Chief Information Officer Terrence Woods, director of Enterprise Information Services (EIS), presented an overview of EIS priorities, organization and performance measures to the Ways and Means subcommittee on March 5, 2025.

Woods opened by summarizing EIS's mission and said, "we act on our mission, we aim for our vision, and we stand on our values," framing the presentation around service, transparency, and security. He told the committee EIS is prioritizing mature governance, cloud strategy and brokerage services, data governance, cybersecurity, and legacy-system modernization.

Cloud strategy, data center resiliency and energy considerations

Woods explained "cloud" as remote compute performed by third-party data centers and described the state data center as a private cloud the state operates. He said EIS acts as a broker to help agencies determine whether their systems are best run in the state data center or on commercial cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google Cloud. He said architecture, data-transfer costs and application readiness determine the right choice for each system.

On resiliency, Woods said EIS recently moved a resilient site from an out-of-state partner (formerly Montana) to a location east of the Cascades with…