Change management for Pega Cloud for Government

This article is part of the Pega Cloud for Government Subscription Documentation.

Pegasystems provides comprehensive change management for Pega Cloud for Government (PCFG) environments. Changes are planned, reviewed, tested, implemented, and validated.

Responsibilities

Pega is responsible for managing all changes to the Pega Cloud for Government environments, which include the underlying cloud infrastructure, as well as patches to Pega-licensed products.  Client changes to applications that are layered on top are the client’s responsibility.  Client-built applications must conform to established Pega Platform best practices and Guardrail Compliance instructions that are posted on Pega Community and provided in the Pega Platform DevStudio.

Requesting changes

To request a Pega Cloud for Government environment change, a client should submit a request by selecting New Request through My Support Portal (available 24 hours a day, seven days a week) and provide all relevant change plan information, materials, and supporting documentation.  If the client has change requests for multiple environments, please submit a separate request for each environment.  Each request must include a complete description of the change, a change plan with at least one task, and proposed start and end dates, times, and time zone. No changes can be made that are not explicitly listed in the request.  When submitting a Cloud Change request via My Support Portal, clients must give a minimum of two hours' notice before the change is needed.  If a Cloud Change is needed sooner – due to downtime in the environment related to a Severity 1 ticket – please call the Pega Support hot line for assistance from a Pega representative.

Clients cannot request to move client’s customer data or other client-confidential information into a non-Production environment.

To protect the security of Pega Cloud for Government client information in production environments, Pegasystems requires written authorization from a Client Security Contact for significant changes such as access level changes, data changes, and platform changes. This written authorization must give at least 72 hours advance notice, and must provide all detail necessary to implement the change; it is specific to one request only, and must be provided by email, document, or letter.  The authorization will be attached to the Change Request as an audited record of the request.  Additionally, Pegasystems may require a signed liability release form for requests to directly access a production database.  Emergency changes (such as a service outage or critical change) which require immediate response (without the 72-hour advance notice) may be made with authorization from a Pega Cloud Change Manager. 

Change requests should only be submitted for activities the client cannot perform through the Pega Platform Dev Studio. Changes required for the proper operation of cloud environments or applications (configuration file changes, Pega software upgrades, and so on) do require a request submission. Similarly, change requests for non-production environments (ex: development, test, staging, etc.) need not be reviewed by Pega  (as they have no compliance or security impact) but should also be submitted in the change request.

Subscription changes

To change the terms of a Pega Cloud for Government subscription (for example, to add a new Strategic Application to the configuration), please contact a Pega Account Executive.