System Upgrade and Maintenance Policy

The Information Resources infrastructure at The City Of El Paso is expanding and continuously becoming more complex. There are more people dependent upon the network, more client machines, upgraded and expanded administrative systems, and more application programs. As the interdependency between Information Resources infrastructure grows, the need for a strong System Upgrade and Maintenance process is essential.

From time to time each Information Resource element requires an outage for planned upgrades, maintenance or fine-tuning. Additionally, unplanned outages may occur that may result in upgrades, maintenance or fine-tuning.

Managing these changes is a critical part of providing a robust and valuable Information Resources infrastructure

• Every change to a The City Of El Paso Information Technology resource such as: operating systems, computing hardware, networks, and applications is subject to the System Upgrade and Maintenance Policy and will follow the System Upgrade and Maintenance Procedures.
• All changes affecting computing environmental facilities (e.g., air-conditioning, water, heat, plumbing, electricity, and alarms) need to be reported to or coordinated with the leader of the System Upgrade and Maintenance process.
• A System Upgrade and Maintenance Committee, appointed by IS Leadership, will meet regularly to review change requests and to ensure that change reviews and communications are being satisfactorily performed.
• A formal written change request will be submitted for all changes, both scheduled and unscheduled.
• All scheduled change requests will be submitted in accordance with System Upgrade and Maintenance procedures so that the System Upgrade and Maintenance Committee has time to review the request, determine and review potential failures, and make the decision to allow or delay the request.
• Each scheduled change request will receive formal System Upgrade and Maintenance Committee approval before proceeding with the change.
• The appointed leader of the System Upgrade and Maintenance Committee may deny a scheduled or unscheduled change for reasons including, but not limited to, inadequate planning, inadequate blackout plans, the timing of the change will negatively impact a key business process such as year end accounting, or if adequate resources cannot be readily available. Adequate resources may be a problem on weekends, holidays, or during special events.
• Customer notification will be completed for each scheduled or unscheduled change following the steps contained in the System Upgrade and Maintenance Procedures.
• A Change Review will be completed for each change, whether scheduled or unscheduled, and whether successful or not.
• A System Upgrade and Maintenance Log will be maintained for all changes. The log will contain, but is not limited to:
  • Date of submission and date of change
  • Owner and custodian contact information
  • Nature of the change
  • Indication of success or failure
• All The City Of El Paso information systems will comply with an Information Resources System Upgrade and Maintenance process that meets the standards outlined above.