IT Policies & Guidance

What's New?

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 Guide and 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.

What about Microsoft Edge and previous browser versions?
Microsoft Edge is considered a distinct browser from Internet Explorer, and is not currently identified as one of the most commonly used browsers. We encourage each agency to use their website-specific traffic analytics to determine which browsers are most commonly used to access their website, and ensure compatibility appropriately. As a rule of thumb, an agency should continue to maintain compatibility with a previous version of the most commonly used internet browsers until that browser version accounts for less than 10% of total website traffic.