House committee advances draft bill requiring ADS project dashboards, seeks ADS input

Representative Kathleen James, chair of the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee, opened Friday’s meeting to continue consideration of draft 250896, "an act relating to the Agency of Digital Services," saying the panel would hear from Legislative Counsel and the Joint Fiscal Office as it refined reporting requirements for state IT projects.

The draft would require the Agency of Digital Services (ADS) to maintain a public “at‑a‑glance” dashboard and an annual report that capture information about IT projects, including scope, status, schedules (original, current and prior estimates), and budgets. Committee members focused on definitions — what counts as a “current” project, whether canceled or abandoned projects should be reported, and whether to retain a $500,000 reporting threshold or require reporting for all projects.

Why it matters: state officials and legislators said the dashboard is intended to improve legislative oversight of large IT spending and to make high‑level project information easily available to the public. Members noted that ADS already collects detailed project information through its project intake forms (referred to in the meeting as the “ABC form”) and discussed linking or pulling data from those internal records rather than requiring duplicate reporting.

Committee discussion centered on three technical issues. First, members clarified that the draft originally referenced two dashboards (active and completed) and that language was adjusted to use plural “dashboards.” Second, Subdivision 4 of the draft — the section that would list projects required to be included — was substantially rewritten during the meeting to call for an outline summary for IT projects with significant costs, specifying fields including project scope, status, a comprehensive schedule showing original and current estimated completion dates plus any earlier estimates, and original and current estimated budgets.

Third, members debated the $500,000 threshold that appears in the draft for inclusion in the completed/cancelled projects dashboard. Some members said the threshold should remain; others argued for a lower threshold or for reporting all projects, because many smaller projects cumulatively represent substantial spending. Representative Michael Southworth and several colleagues urged relying on the ABC form rather than recreating data, saying that form already captures stated project business goals, reasons for budget changes and ongoing updates.

Members also sought to improve clarity about the status field and about start dates: whether a project’s “start” should be the initial planning/initiation date or the execution/contract date. Lisa Bowman of the Joint Fiscal Office told the committee that ADS’s project tracking distinguishes initiation (planning) from execution and that the dashboard can capture both dates; members said they want the dashboard to make clear when dates are estimates and when a project is actively being executed.

The committee agreed to obtain technical feedback from ADS before making further statutory changes. Representative James said she or staff will meet ADS on Monday for detailed feedback; committee markup was scheduled for Tuesday at 1 p.m., and members said they would try to vote the bill out of committee next week so it could reach the floor before crossover. The panel also intends to invite ADS Secretary Riley Hughes to testify once the committee has ADS’s technical input.

No formal motions or votes on the bill were taken during the meeting.

Next steps: committee staff will meet with ADS to confirm what data are available and the likely technical burden of publishing a public dashboard, incorporate ADS feedback into a new draft, and reconvene the committee for markup. Members emphasized a goal of producing a simple, one‑line‑per‑project, printable view for the public while preserving links to more detailed ABC forms for those who want the full record.