An important new policy and standard have been adopted and are now published and available for use. The policy is called the Commonly Used Software Product Retirement Policy and it is used in conjunction with the standard, called the Commonly Used Software Product Standard.
This policy is intended to promote agency awareness of and emphasis on commonly used software product retirement planning. Essentially, the policy requires agencies to use supported versions of the products contained in the standard and to stop using other versions of the software before they reach end of support.
Within the policy, both the State Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the agencies have responsibilities. The CIO will provide communications about upcoming retirements for products contained in the standard and help advocate for prioritization of efforts within the agencies. The CIO will monitor compliance and associated risks. Agencies are responsible for planning and resourcing migrations to new versions of software, accomplishing the migrations and for reporting status along the way.
The Office of the Chief Information Officer will publish a Software Retirement Bulletin on at least a quarterly basis. The bulletin will be issued more frequently if warranted by upcoming retirements. The bulletin will contain information about upcoming end of mainstream support as well as the end of all support. The first bulletin has been published.