IT director asks to sustain ARPA-funded data team, warns of Windows 11 and transparency gaps

The city's Information Technology Services Agency (ITSA) urged the Budget and Public Employees Committee to keep three ARPA-funded data and analytics positions in the general fund, flagged an estimated $475,000 cost to upgrade older PCs to Windows 11, and reported ongoing problems with the city's GovQA-based Sunshine portal search functionality.

Why it matters: The IT department argued that the data and analytics team under ARPA created infrastructure used across departments; losing those positions would remove dashboards and access many departments now rely on. The department also said gaps in web and records search tools undermine transparency.

Cindy Riordan, IT director for the City of St. Louis, introduced the department's scope and staffing request and said ITSA seeks to add planning roles and stronger governance alongside operational staff. "What we would like to add in our staffing side is data manager and portfolio manager," Riordan said, describing roles she said would improve project scoping and reduce costly mid-project changes.

Jason Whiteley, the city's data and analytics manager, described the team's work and the funding risk. "We really feel like that team under the ARPA funding has created a infrastructure for data that the city was, was grossly lacking over the last decade," Whiteley said, noting the team's work to centralize data from systems such as CityWorks, Salesforce and permitting systems into a cloud data warehouse.

Riordan told the committee the department received partial funding to buy new computers but still needs about $475,000 to upgrade roughly 500 older PCs so they can run Windows 11; the department has sought to use current-year savings to cover some of the cost. She also said ITSA lost nearly $500,000 in professional-services funds in the proposed budget, which could affect managed services for critical applications such as Oracle and Salesforce.

Alderwoman Browning asked whether IT maintains the Sunshine portal used for public records requests. Riordan said the city embeds a vendor product (GovQA) and that search and query functionality "is not working at all" for public users. "We're trying to get the vendor's feet to the fire to fix it because we're paying for it," she said; committee members urged a coordinated push to resolve the vendor issues and to consider other transparency tools on the city's open-data portal.

Committee members expressed particular concern about the ARPA-funded data team's expiry: Riordan and Whiteley said the data team is funded through ARPA with the data warehouse grant running to 2027, but the ARPA positions' funding was set to lapse June 2025. Committee members asked budget staff to consider moving the roles into ongoing general revenue funding to retain the team's dashboards and services.

The committee recessed after the IT presentation and moved on to later agenda items.