In 2024, the Legislature passed SHB 1947, which eliminated the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) and incorporated all duties and responsibilities to Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech), as well as renamed the agency from Consolidated Technology Services (CTS) to WaTech. Previous references to the OCIO or CTS should be understood to refer to WaTech.
Washington State Chief Information Security Officer Vinod Brahmapuram participated in a recent webinar hosted by City University of Seattle to discuss the role of cybersecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic.
With many people now working from home, Vinod talked about common cyber threats in this new landscape and provided information on ways organizations and individuals can protect…
On April 15, 2020, WaTech Director and state CIO James Weaver signed a Statement of Work (SOW) with Illinois-based Ensono to begin the transition to mainframe as a service (MFaaS).
The project will involve migrating workloads (applications, databases and interfaces) from Olympia to a mainframe owned and managed by Ensono in its data center. This will include work by Ensono to fully…
State CIO and WaTech Director Jim Weaver wrote a letter to Washington state's Congressional delegation urging them to invest in more IT infrastructure.
The letter was prompted by the intense pressure to respond and provide services to our state's citizens since the COVID-19 pandemic hit Washington, which has seen a significant surge in unemployment claims and individuals applying for…
Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech) has officially partnered with Ensono to transition the current mainframe environments to Ensono's Mainframe Services offering. The contract was signed on March 27, 2020 by Director and State CIO Jim Weaver.
The project entails Ensono taking over operations of the current mainframe in Olympia to fully understand the environment, with the goal to…
With the number of unemployment benefits claims reaching unprecedented levels, WaTech is taking steps to fortify the state's secure login system over the next two weeks to help ensure those claims get through.
Data from SecureAccess Washington (SAW), the state's secure portal serving the Employment Security Department (ESD), shows a 1,700% increase in the number of concurrent users…
