IT Policies & Guidance

What's New?

Telecommunications Preferences Survey Guidance

Issued: May 2020 Due: September 1, 2020

House Bill 1, Article IX, Section 9.11 requires each state agency to:

survey employees on telecommunication preferences,
analyze potential cost savings that may result from implementing the preferences, and
report the results to the Department of Information Resources (DIR) by September 1, 2020, in a format prescribed by the department.

To help agencies meet these requirements, DIR is providing the following guidance.

Instructions for completing the survey, cost analysis, and report to DIR
Workbook that provides an optional methodology for the cost analysis
Form for reporting the overall agency results to DIR

Please contact DIR at: policy@dir.texas.gov with questions about this legislative requirement.

IRM Agency Checklist

DIR has provided an Agency Checklist for Information Resource Managers (IRMs) to help in reminder of duties and roles for their position.

*This checklist is a pilot document and is subject to change

Policy Template and Examples

DIR has provided an example of its internal Policy Management Guideand different policies from other state agencies and institutions of higher education. Below are the examples and a brief description of each type of policy:

Software Currency- to help agencies reduce the use of unsupported software and decrease security vulnerabilities in state agency IT systems.

Texas Department of Information Resources Template: Software Currency Policy Template 07/06/2016

Data Management- to develop and execute policies and procedures that properly manage full data management for the needs of an agency.

Texas Department of Information Resources Internal Policy: Data Classification and Management Policy, 07/22/2014
University of Texas at Austin: Data Classification, 8/24/2015

Security- what it means to be secure for a system or agency and to address the constraints on behavior of its members and systems.

State of New York: Information Security Policy, 06/19/2015
State of South Carolina: Information Security Policy, 11/03/2014

Disaster Recovery- how agency work can be resumed quickly and effectively following a disaster.

State of Arizona: Incident Response Planning Policy, 07/01/2015
State of Massachusetts: Enterprise Business Continuity for IT Management Policy, 06/05/2013

Risk Management- to process the identification, analysis, and acceptance or mitigation of uncertainty in decision making.

State of New York: Information Security Risk Management

Most Commonly Used Internet Browsers

The 84th Legislative Session passed House Bill 855 which requires each state agency and publicly-funded institution of higher education that has a generally accessible website to ensure compatibility between that website and the most commonly used internet browsers, as identified by DIR.

View the list of Most Commonly Used Internet Browsers and frequently asked questions about website compatibility.