House committee debates stricter reporting, public dashboard for ADS IT projects

The House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee on Thursday, Feb. 20 reviewed draft DR250896, version 1.3, a bill that would require the Agency of Digital Services (ADS) to publish more detailed public reporting on state information-technology projects and maintain a public “project dashboard.”

Committee members focused on three central questions: which projects must appear on the dashboard, how much historical revision history the public report should include, and whether the dashboard or an annual report should carry the bulk of the detail. Rick Segal of the Office of Legislative Counsel read proposed language that would require “the agency shall maintain a project dashboard on its publicly accessible website that provides status of all current information technology projects with a total estimated cost of $500,000 or greater.”

The bill’s drafters proposed two separate public products: a dynamic “current projects” dashboard showing planning and operational projects (with fields such as agency, project name, estimated and current start/completion dates, original and current cost, timestamps and…