Project Closeout Report
Project Name
Voter Registration Election
Management (VREMS)
Date
09/15/09
Executive Sponsor
Mary Herrera
Lead Agency
SOS
Project Manager
Jose Hernandez
Agency Code
37000
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The voter registration election management system is a statewide system that maintains voter registration files. Each county
clerk is responsible for the upkeep of their respective county.
The purpose of this project is to enhance and upgrade the Voter Registration and Election Management System to be more
user friendly and provide additional functionality for the County Clerk’s offices who are the primary users of this system.
Schedule and Budget
Planned Start Date
March 01, 2008
Actual Start Date
March 11, 2008
Planned End Date
July31, 2009
Actual End Date
July 31, 2009
Planned Cost: (Budget)
$150,000.00
Actual Cost:
(Total)
$150,000.00
 Professional
Services
VREMS Enhancements: $16,547.00
VREMS Enhancements: $15,500.00
Update Public List: $6,375.00
 Professiona
l Services
VREMS Enhancements:
$16,547.00
VREMS Enhancements:
$15,500.00
Update Public List: $6,375.00
 Hardware
Power Distribution Unit: $9047.40
 Hardware
Power Distribution Unit:
$9047.40
 Software
Server Development Suite: $1111.86
Oracle Software Licensing: $88,389.00
Citrix Licenses: $12,106.04
 Software
Server Development Suite:
$1111.86
Oracle Software Licensing:
$88,389.00
Citrix Licenses: $12,106.04
 Network
Network Switches: $857.66
 Network
Network Switches: $857.66
 Other
 Other
Appropriation History (Include all Funding sources,
Amount
e.g. Federal, State, County, Municipal laws or grants)
Funding Source(s)
Fiscal Year
FY 2009
$150,000.00
Laws 2008, Chapter 3, Section 7, Item 19
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Project Closeout Report
Scope Verification
Requirements Review
Yes
Were the project objectives (expected outcomes) accomplished?
x
Were all Deliverables submitted and accepted?
x
Did the IV&V vendor verify that all deliverables met the requirements?
Have all contracts been closed?
Have all final payments been made (i.e., invoices paid)
Has adequate knowledge transfer been completed?
No
Explanation/Notes
x
x
x
x
TRANSITION TO OPERATIONS
The scheduled release of the new PowerProfile 10.0 on September 11, 2009 will deploy the absentee and election
module, job processor, petitions, political subdivisions, PowerLock, public service requests, street file and the voter
registration module addressing all the issues concerning the New Mexico voter transfer functionality into production of
the VREMS application. The production servers housing the VREMS application reside in the DOIT Simms data
center. A hot site mirroring the production servers for VREMS at the Simms building is located in Albuquerque, and is
managed by OSO Grande Technologies.
Maintenance/Operations
Yes
Are there recurring maintenance/operational costs for the product/service?
x
Are there any recommended enhancements or updates?
x
Funding source for maintenance/operational costs?
No
Explanation/Notes
$ 19,198.87 monthly cost for
maintenance and support
$175.00/hr for code upgrades
and enhancements.
The current server hardware
housing the VREMS
application at both DoIT and
OSO Grande has reached its
end of life and needs to be
upgraded to current blade
technology or better.
Operating Budget
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BUSINESS PERFORMANCE MEASURES (COMPLETE FOR ALL PHASES)
COMMENTS:
PHASES
COMPLETION DATE
Initiation:
03/01/08
GOALS/OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this project is to
enhance and upgrade the Voter
Registration and Election
Management System to be more
user friendly and provide additional
functionality for the County Clerk’s
offices who are the primary users of
this functionality and technology.
03/04/08
Testing and configuration updates of all
enhancements.
08/01/08
Citrix Licensing, network switches
setups and implementation.
AMOUNT
$75,000
Enhancements were
completed by ES&S as
requested by the SOS
office.
$25,000
Develop a secured
User Acceptance
Testing (UAT ) server
environment
$50,000
Increased county user
access and network
switch setup for
VREMS users
Planning:
Implementation:
Closeout:
09/24/09
RESULTS
$0.0
LESSONS LEARNED



Additional Citrix licenses were needed during election cycle due to the demand of the counties accessing the
VREMS systems.
The implementation of the hot site at OSO Grande Technologies mirroring VREMS services at DoIT was a
great benefit for the counties in the event of a systems failure at the Simms data center during election time.
Additional line speed and bandwidth of the counties was required in order to enhance productivity.
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Project Closeout Report
IT System Analysis
o Hardware: A power distribution unit and additional switches were purchased in order
to handle the enhancements done to the VREMS application.
o
Citrix Licenses,
o
Where is this system hosted?

The VREMS is currently hosted at the Simms Data Center. This is the primary
site.

The secondary site is located in Albuquerque OSO Grande Technologies and
mirrors the primary site located at Simms Data Center.
 The enhancements of the VREMS project starting from the initiation phase up to the close out
phase was deployed from the production servers located at the Simms data center.
 Provide Application Architecture Schematic:
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Business Continuity Strategy
 Emergency and Disaster Management: In the event of a complete system failure at the DoIT
Data Center, the system will immediately switch over to OSO Grande technology hot site.
 Business Resumption: The following document describes a set of instructions created by the IT
director for business resumption and operations recovery in the event of a system failure at the
DoIT data center. The document was addressed to all New Mexico county clerks.
Date: August 22, 08
To:
County Clerks
From: Mary Herrera, Secretary of State
Subject: Disaster Recovery
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The purpose of this memo, is to provide instructions in the event of a disaster, in terms of
providing information services (VREMS – Voter Registration and Election Management
System) to the County Offices from the primary processing location of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A disaster is defined as the interruption of information services between the Offices of the
County Clerks and VREMS System located in the Simms Building in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
This disruption can occur in two forms:
1) the VREMS operational platforms can be broken with no opportunity for an immediate
remedy;
2) all telecommunications links between the Offices of the County Clerks and the Simms
Building in Santa Fe are severed and there is no immediate remedy. In either case, processing
will cease and information technology services are not available from the primary processing
center.
In addition, there are two situations under which the disaster may be declared and that depends
upon the critical period of processing. The first period is during a major statewide primary and
general election. If an outage disrupts service to the Counties, and this disruption cannot be
restored within 30 to 45 minutes, a disaster will be declared and a switch to the alternate
system will be invoked. The second period is a non – election situation which may be in an
alternate year or in a period of time prior to the election, itself. In this case, if the disruption to
service cannot be restored within four business hours, a disaster will be declared to move the
processing from the primary to the business recovery site.
The following is a list of steps that must take place for the switching of services from the
primary services location of the Simms Building located in Santa Fe, New Mexico to the hot
site for business recovery at OSO Grande Technologies located in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
 When an outage is incurred and the assessment is that the service cannot be restored in
one hour, a decision will be made by the SOS Information Technology Director, that a
switch will be made to the backup recovery site.
 The SOS Director of Information Technology will, along with appropriate staff from
the SOS office, notify each of the County Clerks and their Deputy County Clerks if
available that the Office of the Secretary of State is declaring a disaster and that a
switch will occur to the alternate processing site.
 When the County Clerk or the Deputy County Clerk is notified by the calling SOS employee, they will receive a code which will validate that this call is authentic.
 Each County Clerk will receive, in advance, a sealed envelope which will include two
codes; one for a first call declaring a disaster, and a second code, that gives permission
to begin using the recovery site. The purpose of these codes is to validate and authenticate the phone calls that will be received.
 Once the first phone call has been validated, the County Clerks will wait until they receive a second phone call from the Office of the Secretary of State giving permission
to begin using a new URL that will allow access to the business recovery site. A second phone call and code will be given that will signify to the Counties that their personnel can begin using the business recovery site. The URL for the business recovery
site is https://www2.vrems.sos.state.nm.us . Every County whether they are connected via
an ISP or a T1 line must now connect via their internet provider using this new URL.
 Do not use this URL unless a disaster has been declared and you have received a second phone call from the Office of the Secretary of State and authenticated by a second
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

code.
All County Clerks will be notified when processing will be initiated again at the primary processing site of the Simms Building in Santa Fe, NM. This will probably occur on
a weekend and be available on the following Monday morning. Calls and emails will
go out on that Monday morning and the County Clerks will begin using the original
URL for access to the primary processing system.
Only at that time, when all Offices of the County Clerks are deployed back to the primary processing system located in the Simms Building in Santa Fe, New Mexico, will
the disaster be declared to be over.
Should you have any questions on the subject of disaster recovery, please call me at 505-8273661.
Thank you for your cooperation on this very important matter.
SOS IT Management
Security Strategy (Application and Data Security Process, Plan, or Standard)
A complete Network Security Assessment was done for the Secretary of State’s Office by Computational
Analysis and Network Enterprise Solutions, LLC on June of 2009 as indicated in the document below.
Security strategies and processes for the SOS network infrastructure have been tightened and planned out by
the contractor and are available upon request to the SOS Office IT Management.
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Revision: 8/20/08
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Revision: 8/20/08
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Project Closeout Report
Project Sign Off
The signatures below certify that this project has been completed in accordance to the specified budget, schedule,
scope, and achieved the intended outcome.
STAKEHOLDERS
NAME: SIGNATURE
DATE
Executive Sponsor
(or Designee)
Mary Herrera
09/15/09
Lead Agency Head
(or Designee)
Don Francisco Trujillo II
09/15/09
CIO IT Lead
Kelli Fulgenzi
09/15/09
Project Manager
Jose Hernandez
09/15/09
This is a controlled document; this version supersedes all other versions.
Revision: 8/20/08
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