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State CIO proposes consolidating programs, up to 89 IT positions to cut contractor costs and boost cybersecurity and data management
Summary
Nebraska’s chief information officer told the Appropriations Committee the Office of the CIO wants to consolidate five programs into one for fiscal flexibility, add up to 89 FTEs focused on cybersecurity, web portals, data management and project management, and reduce reliance on high‑priced contractors over time.
Matthew McCarville, Nebraska’s chief information officer, told the Appropriations Committee the Office of the CIO (OCIO) seeks to consolidate five existing budget programs into a single program to allow flexible use of revolving fund authority and to request up to 89 net new FTEs to build state capacity in cyber security, web portal development, data management and project management.
McCarville said OCIO’s current program structure dates from an earlier technological era and that uneven timing of large, centralized costs (for example, the annual Microsoft enterprise payment) can leave other program budgets temporarily short. Unifying programs into a single appropriations program would, the CIO said, permit OCIO to use available appropriations across internal functions to avoid interrupting operations when large line‑item payments fall in one quarter.
The 89 requested FTEs would be used to create an in‑house joint security operations center (JSOC), expand web portal development to reduce reliance on outside vendors, create data‑management teams to extract and clean data housed on legacy mainframes, and enlarge project management and business analysis capacity. McCarville said those hires would be used selectively to replace or reduce approximately 300 external contractors across state government where feasible and where it produces net savings.
The CIO’s testimony emphasized long‑term savings, better security posture and more usable statewide data as goals. Committee members asked how the agency would identify contractors to convert to state employment and requested more detail on expected offsets; McCarville said OCIO would provide cost comparisons and a transition plan to justify new FTEs and claimed the shift could reduce high hourly contractor costs.
No committee vote was recorded in the transcript. OCIO asked the committee to consider the consolidation and FTE authority as part of its biennial budget review and offered to provide additional financial analyses on contractor offsets.
