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City IT warns data analytics roles and system upgrades at risk under FY26 budget
Summary
IT Director Cindy Riordan told the Budget and Public Employees Committee on May 20 that three ARPA-funded data analytics positions and other planning roles were not fully funded in FY26, and that roughly 500 older PCs need replacing to meet Windows 11 requirements; the committee discussed the govQA Sunshine portal and professional-services cuts.
Cindy Riordan, director of Information Technology for the City of St. Louis, told the Budget and Public Employees Committee on May 20 that her FY26 request included positions and upgrades intended to add governance, data management and project-portfolio planning to the IT department, but several requested roles were not funded.
"What we're missing is that governance board, and some data management and portfolio management," Riordan said, describing a desired planning arm to reduce costly, siloed purchases and improve project scope and outcomes.
Riordan said the cityreceived an additional security administrator and converted a shared GIS position to full-time in IT and planning, but that she did not receive funding to continue the three-person data analytics team once ARPA support expires. Jason Whiteley, the data and analytics manager, said the team manages the city's cloud data warehouse and Tableau visualizations and that core grant funding for the data warehouse runs through 2027, but that ARPA money supporting staff "runs out June 25." Whiteley said the team helped build LouStat dashboards used by the mayor's office and warned that losing the team would remove momentum on those efforts.
Riordan told the committee the department needs about $475,000 to replace roughly 500 older PCs that cannot run Windows 11; roughly half that amount made it into the proposed FY26 budget. She said she is seeking a midyear budget transfer to cover the remainder but that departments may need to replace machines if no transfer is approved.
The IT director also described reductions to professional-services funding of about half a million dollars and said those cuts could reduce managed-service support for critical enterprise platforms such as Oracle and Salesforce and delay a web redesign effort.
Committee members pressed Riordan about the citySunshine portal, a vendor-hosted GovQA product embedded in the city website. Riordan said the portalallows request submission, but search and historical-query functions do not work properly and the IT team has been trying to obtain the vendor agreement to press the vendor for fixes. "It's been 17 months, I think, that this has been going on," Riordan said.
Riordan asked that the committee consider prioritizing funding to roll ARPA-funded data positions into the General Revenue Fund to avoid losing the capability. She said the service desk manager and a project/portfolio manager were her other top, unfunded priorities.
No formal committee vote was taken on IT items during the May 20 hearing; members requested follow-up information about GovQA, the Windows upgrades and the ARPA-to-GRF funding request.
Sources: Testimony by Cindy Riordan, Jason Whiteley and budget staff, Budget and Public Employees Committee, May 20, 2025.
