The Texas Quality Assurance Team (QAT) is responsible for providing oversight and guidance, and reporting agency project trends and updates to the legislature. This training will give attendees an understanding of the IT funding process, including funding trends in the Texas Legislature, along with a discussion of the role the Quality Assurance Team plays in oversight and reporting. In addition, QAT members from the LBB, CPA, SAO and DIR will share their insights and best practices for major IT projects. Learning objectives for this session include: understand the funding process for Information Technology projects, review key legislation impacting major IT projects, gain insight on the Quality Assurance Team’s role, and learn about new tools and best practices to support your major IT project implementation. 

To serve Texans, our governmental entities must collect, process, and store significant amounts of personal information.  We have both legal and ethical obligations to ensure that data is used consistent with privacy laws and our constituents’ expectations. This privacy-focused session will address basic privacy fundamentals and best practices, how to train employees to better protect personal information, what to include in a privacy notice, and the requirements governmental entities must comply with when collecting, processing, and storing personal information.  Seasoned privacy officers from some of Texas’ larger agencies will share their experiences in developing privacy programs and evaluating new projects and technology to consider privacy risks. Attendees will have an opportunity to network with and learn from privacy professionals from other governmental entities across the state.

Data literacy programs offer a consistent language and best practices for the management, sharing and use of data. The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) Texas Data Literacy Program (TDLP) is designed to provide foundational information on topics such as data management, data sharing, and analytics. DIR encourages each state agency and institution of higher education to utilize the Texas Data Literacy Program (TDLP) courses as a springboard to create their own organization-specific data literacy programs. In this pre-conference session, we will explore the components of a data literacy strategy to develop a program tailored to address organization-specific needs. Representatives from MD Anderson will join the session to discuss their efforts, challenges, and successes in developing their own data literacy program.

Join us to transform your approach to customer insights and achieve meaningful change at your agency. As organizations implement new technologies and processes, are they evaluating customer expectations before implementation? Are organizations including employees as customers? In this interactive workshop you’ll discover how to develop, analyze, and leverage customer data to make informed decisions that improve customer satisfaction and service delivery for both internal and external customers through three key factors: Feelings, Persona Profiles, and Journey Maps.