Arizona Governor Vetoes Data Center Consolidation and Cloud Bill

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has vetoed a bill that would require state agencies to consolidate data centers, migrate as many of their application workloads to cloud services as possible, and to review their IT infrastructure decisions every two years.

The bill, SB 1434, passed the legislature and was placed in front of the governor earlier this month. Ducey vetoed it this past Tuesday.

Its text didn’t include any specific requirements for data center consolidation, saying only that departments would have to “identify opportunities for information technology consolidation and shared services, including consolidating servers and data centers.”

The proposed legislation was a lot more specific about cloud. It would require each state agency or department with its own budget to “evaluate and progressively migrate” existing workloads to cloud services, evaluating hardware and software decisions every two years with the goal of moving to cloud, and reporting regularly on their progress to the state CIO and chair of the legislative budget committee.

The agencies would have to consider cloud services before making any new IT or telecommunications investments. They would have to make sure services they select comply with a list of federal security and privacy policies, such as FedRAMP, HIPAA, and others.

See also: White House Orders Federal Data Center Construction Freeze