DIT outlines modernization plan, flags COBOL mainframe risk and 20,000 open 3‑1‑1 tickets

The City’s Department of Information Technology presented a multi-part plan to modernize legacy systems, consolidate duplicate tools and reduce operational risk from aging infrastructure that staff said is costly to maintain.

“We've been running DIT kind of on a shoestring for years,” Director and Chief Information Officer Brian McKee told the committee, framing the modernization needs.

McKee said vehicle-registration and driver-license functions still rely on a COBOL-based mainframe (IMS/CICS) with only two remaining COBOL programmers in the department. “I used to have 20 and now I have 2 left,” McKee said, describing the staffing and maintenance risk for legacy code. The department is evaluating options to replace the mainframe system; McKee identified the FAST off‑the‑shelf system (common in other states) with a quoted implementation cost between $60 million and $67 million, and a more modular state-developed solution (Max) used by Arizona’s DOT that could be shared with other states and that several other states are adopting.

McKee also addressed public-facing systems: the HNL software suite (payments and event ticketing), AlohaQ queuing at motor-vehicle offices, a DPR reservation system and the Lokahi GIS platform. He said Lokahi holds many internal datasets and the department is vetting what can be published publicly because of personally identifiable information and other sensitivities.

The director flagged 3‑1‑1 and DART replacement work and the problem of open tickets: “We have 20,000 open tickets right now in the current system,” McKee said. He described causes that include unactionable entries, tickets that were completed operationally but not closed in the system, and drop-down menu categorizations that route items incorrectly; DIT said it is redesigning the intake taxonomy and pursuing a work-order integration that will allow automatic closure when a relevant operational system completes the task.

On emerging technology, McKee said DIT has an in‑house NVIDIA machine and is piloting voice and chat AI tools for customer service and internal productivity. The department is also planning cloud migration for its ERP (CGI Advantage) and continuing telecom and radio upgrades, including a phased rollout of P25 radios with encryption; McKee said the city will receive several hundred radios per year from the police department’s replacements and must coordinate encryption rollouts across agencies to avoid interoperability loss.

Applications chief Nancy Vo noted the HNL payment and events systems are developed in‑house and that DIT is discussing onboarding some Department of Enterprise Services functions to HNL Pay when existing vendor contracts (Ticketmaster, etc.) expire. McKee said DIT has about 160 staff working on projects and stressed the need for prioritized budget investments to retire unsupported software and purchase modern tools for work and asset management.

Committee members asked about the municipal homeless-management tools, capacity for AI compute and utility needs, and next steps to reduce open tickets; DIT said it is coordinating cross‑department pilots and will present deeper technical briefings on request. No formal action was taken at the hearing.