(1) Except as provided by subsection (2) of this section, state agencies shall locate all existing and new information or telecommunications investments in the state data center or within third-party, commercial cloud computing services.
(2) State agencies with a service requirement that precludes them from complying with subsection (1) of this section must receive a waiver from the agency. Waivers must be based upon written justification from the requesting state agency citing specific service or performance requirements for locating servers outside the state's common platform.
(3) The legislature and the judiciary, which are constitutionally recognized as separate branches of government, may enter into an interagency agreement with the agency to migrate its servers into the state data center or third-party, commercial cloud computing services.
(4) This section does not apply to institutions of higher education.
Findings—Intent—2021 c 40: "(1) The legislature finds that the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the needs of the people of Washington for state services. From unemployment benefits to information on the incidence of disease in the state, Washingtonians have increasingly turned to state government for vital services and information.
(2) The legislature further finds that the state's information technology infrastructure is outdated and with insufficient capacity to handle the increased demand and has, in many cases, not been adequate to enable the state to provide the needed services effectively and efficiently.
(3) Therefore, the legislature intends to migrate the state's information technology toward cloud services, which will deliver the capacity, security, resiliency, disaster recovery capability, and data analytics necessary to allow the state to provide Washingtonians the services they require during this pandemic and in the future." [
2021 c 40 s 1.]