IT director requests increased budget citing cybersecurity workload; board raises questions on long-term costs

Jeff, McPherson County’s IT director, presented his proposed 2026 information-technology budget on June 23, saying the proposed total represents about a 10% increase over 2025 and that the office is trying to keep increases below industry averages.

Jeff told the board the typical annual IT increase is 20%–30% but that his proposed budget shows a smaller rise. He attributed the rise primarily to personnel costs and new contractual obligations for patching, asset management, help-desk functions and enhanced backup/disaster recovery services. Jeff said cybersecurity and managing security tools now consume the majority of his time — he estimated roughly “80% of my time” is spent on security management — and that to perform the work in-house would require two to three more employees.

Board members asked for clarification on personnel line items and whether software subscription and telephone line items could be reallocated between budget lines to better reflect recurring costs (Jeff said some Office 365 costs historically moved between line items and he recommended consolidating software purchases under IT to ensure department consultation for technology purchases). Commissioners also asked Jeff to refine capital-outlay needs and to correct an apparent personnel-salary table formatting error in the packet; staff agreed to update and resubmit corrected figures.

Jeff said he has asked other departments to include server replacements in their budgets and that he expects to replace a backup Active Directory server for the courthouse if capital outlay is approved. He said several security and management tools purchased in 2025 contributed to the contractual increase for 2026, and that consolidating software purchasing with IT will reduce unsupported ad-hoc purchases by departments.