Executive Summary
Providing uninterrupted access to critical government services is the top priority for the Ohio Department of
Administrative Services InnovateOhio Platform (IOP) team. Because IOP takes service reliability so seriously,
the team is constantly working to overcome the diagnostic challenges inherent in managing such a
complex system.
This goal led the team to ask a critical question: How can issues be pinpointed and resolved more quickly?
But then, the team went a step further – what if issues could be proactively detected and resolved before they
become incidents?
That’s where the Scan, Activate, Fortify, and Evaluate (S.A.F.E.) Framework came in. S.A.F.E. strengthens our
ability to pinpoint and respond to issues more quickly and also enables us to be more proactive – giving staff
the foresight to stay ahead of issues, preventing downtime that limits Ohioans’ access to critical services.
In 2019, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s Executive Order 2019-15D established IOP, heralding a new, unified, and enterprise-wide approach to how the State of Ohio delivers services to and does business with Ohioans. Ohioans depend on these systems every day to apply for and access essential benefits. Our citizens need these systems to be convenient, easy to access, and always available. In the state’s business continuity plan, IOP is the second most important program after 911 services.
A growing platform and an increasing number of services delivered through IOP increase opportunities for system failures, as well as a broader threat landscape vulnerable to attacks. It quickly became clear to the Ohio Department of Administrative Services (DAS) and its vendor partner, Deloitte, that to maintain and provide access to the platform, a new, advanced strategy that could grow with the rapidly expanding platform was needed.
DAS and Deloitte developed and implemented the S.A.F.E. Framework. It is a unique, efficient approach that leverages enterprise-wide, real-time analytics, human oversight, and extensive visibility to deliver superior monitoring capabilities, enabling Ohio’s IT teams to solve problems before citizens ever notice them.
Our IOP monitoring and alert strategy hinges on tracking the right data and sharing it with IT teams as quickly and efficiently as possible to enable proactive response. It brings enterprise-wide, real-time monitoring and predictive alerts across 100,000 key platform metrics per hour, spanning everything from server performance and user touchpoints to backend batch code upgrades.
IOP can quickly recognize potential anomalies and issues because the team understands what healthy applications, traffic patterns, utilization, and other key components look like.
