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State CIO and data center leaders outline IT modernization roadmap and mainframe transition
Summary
Oregon’s state CIO, data center director and a national CIO association representative briefed the Joint Committee on Information Management and Technology on state IT modernization efforts, governance, workforce challenges and a planned procurement for mainframe-as-a-service.
State Chief Information Officer Stacy R. Woods, the director of the Oregon State Data Center and a national state CIO association representative briefed the Joint Committee on Information Management and Technology on April 4 about enterprise IT modernization work including strategic planning, data center services, mainframe transition planning and workforce constraints.
Woods described a statewide approach that pairs six assistant state CIOs with agencies to develop business-linked IT strategic plans and governance, and emphasized that "modernization is not a destination," meaning agencies must sustain updates after removing legacy technical debt. She told the committee the assistant state CIOs help agencies align IT strategy with business plans, improve governance, and build modernization road maps; agencies must update IT strategic plans by June 1 under the governor’s directive, and smaller agencies (under 50 FTE) will integrate IT strategy into their agency plans with assist from EIS.
James Foster, director of the Oregon State Data Center and Data Center Services, described the data center’s three service buckets—cloud brokering, colocation and managed services—and said the data center now supports over 120 cloud subscriptions and provides centralized infrastructure, 24/7 support and economies of scale. Foster said co-location services were launched after infrastructure upgrades and that co-location can act as a “stepping stone” to managed services; last biennium the data center migrated nine agencies and it is currently working with five more.
Foster addressed the state’s mainframe, which he said remains a supported platform but is at a transition point: the state now runs a single physical mainframe shared across agencies after earlier consolidation, about 50 applications remain on the platform with the majority owned by three agencies, and, citing workforce risk, "14 of the 16 staff that support the mainframe are eligible for retirement." Foster said the data center has been following a consultant roadmap and is preparing a mid-2025 request for proposals for a mainframe-as-a-service procurement, targeting vendor onboarding by early 2026.
Officials and the committee discussed common modernization barriers: shortage of skilled project managers, business analysts and change-management professionals; procurement timelines; agency budget silos that complicate enterprise approaches; and the predominance of operating expenditures (OPEX) for many modern cloud and software-as-a-service models. Woods said progress requires investing in people and aligning business processes to off-the-shelf products rather than heavily customizing software, which complicates future upgrades.
Doug Robinson, representing the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), gave national context on how other states fund modernization. He described several fund models: recurring legislative appropriations, one-time capital investments, bond-funded programs, revolving/loan funds, assessments or fee-based mechanisms and competitive innovation grants. Robinson noted cybersecurity has been a primary driver for supplemental statewide IT funding in many states and highlighted examples of modernization funds in other states and their governance models, which typically place a multi-agency investment review board or cabinet-level panel in the decision role.
Committee members asked about recruitment strategies to expand state IT staffing and whether the state could recruit displaced federal IT workers; Woods said the state relies on a mix of HR outreach, network-sharing, LinkedIn and partner help and agreed to work with the chief human resources office to explore targeted recruitment approaches. Officials also noted EIS has added agile methodology to the stage-gate process to enable iterative delivery and to reduce late-stage project risk.
Presenters said the 2024 benchmark study of the data center is posted online as required by statute and includes cost and service comparisons and that DCS continues to evolve pricing and services in response to agency needs. The committee concluded the informational portion of the meeting after the presentations and Q&A; no formal committee action was taken during the briefing.
