The North Dakota Information Technology (NDIT) office briefed the Task Force on statewide IT structure, an inventory of applications and plans to modernize customer-facing and internal services, including a ServiceNow rollout and a multi-year plan to retire legacy systems.

Chief Information Officer Corey Mach described NDIT as the central IT service for most executive-branch agencies and explained why the agency must recoup costs through advance rate-setting that feeds into agency budgets. He told the Task Force that NDIT supports a large and diverse application portfolio and that planning, procurement timelines and vendor processes often lengthen project delivery times.

Mach said NDIT’s current inventory identifies about 1,800 applications on the state network. He noted that many agencies operate separate systems for grants, case management and project tracking — an arrangement that reduces volume discounts and increases operational complexity. "Across all of the agencies in the state of North Dakota, we currently have 14 unique grant management solutions, 12 project management solutions, 6 event management solutions, more than 10 different case management systems," Mach said, arguing for consolidation where appropriate to reduce duplicative support burdens.

Mach described the mainframe as a persistent legacy challenge. Several agencies have already migrated off the mainframe; Department of Transportation (DOT) is expected to complete its migration by the end of the current biennium. He said DHHS remains a major holdout and that NDIT aims to have DHHS’s final mainframe-dependent applications migrated by the 2027–29 biennium so the agency can retire the mainframe entirely.

To improve constituent services and internal workflows, NDIT recommended expanding ServiceNow-based solutions to offer a single sign‑on, service catalog and an Employee Center that automates onboarding and offboarding tasks. Mach described expected operational gains from automation — faster incident resolution, fewer manual steps and lower error rates — and said the employee portal and automated provisioning would reduce the administrative burden of license and access management.

Mach also explained rate-setting mechanics: because NDIT’s operating budget is recovered through bill-back rates, the agency must estimate service costs well before legislative budget cycles end. To reduce future rate volatility, NDIT is evaluating options to pull enterprise overhead and licensing out of per-service rates and fund those central costs separately. The agency plans to present alternative rate models and a draft statewide IT plan to the Task Force and to the legislative IT committee as part of the next biennial budget cycle.

NDIT staff asked the Task Force to support earlier engagement in agency procurements and to authorize more consistent, enterprise-level solutions to reduce duplicative procurements and improve security and continuity.