House committee marks up bill requiring Agency of Digital Services to publish IT project inventory

The House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee on Feb. 28 considered and marked up draft language that would require the Agency of Digital Services (ADS) to provide the General Assembly and the public with expanded reporting on certain information-technology projects, including a publicly available current projects inventory.

The bill’s intent language, read and discussed by Representative Kathleen James, said: “The intent of this act is to provide the general assembly and the public with more transparency about the scope, budget, and overall status of certain IT projects being managed by the Agency of Digital Services.” Committee members then worked through precise statutory language to define which projects are included and what fields the inventory must show.

Why it matters: Committee members said the inventory is intended to give lawmakers and the public clear, comparable information about project scope, budget, timeline, changes over time, and whether a project is on time or on budget. The committee’s work stems from concerns that current reporting did not show how scope, budget or timelines changed during a project’s life and that an inventory could reduce information gaps.

Key provisions discussed

- Scope and filter: The draft uses projects managed by the agency’s Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO) as the filter for which projects must be reported, rather than a dollar threshold alone. Committee members confirmed the EPMO filter is intended to capture the projects the agency actively manages.

- Inventory fields and frequency: The inventory would be posted on a publicly available website and updated at least monthly. Required fields discussed include project name, start date, estimated date of completion at the start of implementation, an indicator whether the project is on time, the estimated project cost at the start of implementation with an indicator whether it is on budget, and the current estimated date of completion and current estimated cost.

- Life-cycle and staffing costs: The committee added language to require a business case that includes life-cycle costs and, when available, staffing costs provided by the relevant state government business partner (as the draft defines that term). Members debated wording and punctuation to make clear that staffing costs are included only when those costs are available from the state partner.

- Agency/department identification: Members discussed how to represent the state entity that sponsors a project. The draft uses the phrase “state government business partner,” and the committee debated whether to list an agency and the department separately so ADS can roll projects up by agency and also show subsidiary departments (for example, Agency of Human Services and, beneath it, Department of Mental Health).

- Implementation-phase indicators and “changes over time”: Committee members emphasized that indicators of whether a project is on time or on budget are not sufficient alone; the committee wants the record to reflect how scope, budget and timeline have changed over the life of a project.

Procedural and timing details

The draft keeps an effective date of July 1. Committee staff and members agreed to have the drafter produce a clean draft (1.6) reflecting the edits discussed; the committee did not take a formal, final vote at the meeting. Representative Kathleen James closed the discussion by saying members would wait for a clean draft and then vote.

Quotes

"The intent of this act is to provide the general assembly and the public with more transparency about the scope, budget, and overall status of certain IT projects being managed by the Agency of Digital Services," Representative Kathleen James said during discussion of the bill's intent language.

"There’s no mention of the agency in there, and they were talking about using that to roll it up within the dashboard," Lisa McGavin, JFO IT consultant, said while explaining how ADS currently groups projects by agency and department in the dashboard.

What was not decided or remains unresolved

Committee members left open several drafting details to be resolved in the clean draft, including the precise phrasing of the state partner/agency/department fields, punctuation and placement of clauses about staffing costs, and confirmation that the inventory will be updated "at least monthly." No formal amendments or votes were recorded in the transcript; the committee planned to vote after reviewing the clean draft.

Next steps

Staff will prepare a revised clean draft reflecting the committee’s edits. The committee indicated it will take a formal vote after reviewing that draft and completing minor editorial fixes (capitalization and terminology).