Faster, more efficient and more secure: Washington state’s business systems will get some major tech updates
Gov. Jay Inslee recently signed an executive order that directs Washington state agencies to update many of the state’s technology systems — some of them from the dinosaur era, in computer years. These systems help the state continue uninterrupted services to Washingtonians and are overdue for important and more current technology updates.
Walk into an average home today and you won’t likely see a clunky television with bunny ears or an old icebox in the kitchen. And maybe not even a computer with a dial-up modem.
Some state government systems operate on the equivalents of those bunny ears: 50-year-old mainframe technology for the state’s financial system. Programming code so old that fewer and fewer technicians know how to fix it. Old systems that make it more difficult to search for the best price for taxpayers when the state purchases items that range from pens to light bulbs to computer programs.
