Legislative IT director briefs House committee on staffing, security posture and website fixes

Kevin Moore, director of IT for the General Assembly, briefed the House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure on Feb. 11 about the office’s mission, staffing and near-term priorities. Moore said the office supports internal legislative operations and some public-facing services, and that its work underpins committee hearings, public access and the legislature’s records systems.

Moore told the committee the office has nine authorized positions with eight currently filled and an operating budget that covers licensing, software development and infrastructure. He said non‑personnel operating expenses run roughly $800,000 annually for licensing and development work. Moore described efforts to create a small reserve for capital needs such as storage and infrastructure replacements, which tend to be costly but have multi‑year life spans.

Moore outlined service areas: AV and live‑streaming support (the office recently added an AV specialist), bill‑tracking and document management, website hosting and maintenance, cybersecurity, and fleet/device management. He said the office is migrating to a new document-management system after a stakeholder review and is rebuilding a committee-document search feature that had degraded. Moore said the search fix would be tested outside peak production hours and rolled out when validated.

On cybersecurity, Moore told the committee the office follows industry standards and federal guidance, checks FedRAMP status for cloud products, and participates in information‑sharing groups (the Multi‑State Information Sharing and Analysis Center and related federal channels) to monitor threats. He offered to provide a security briefing to the committee and noted Raine Torres as the office’s network security administrator.

Committee members praised the office’s rapid pivot during the COVID period to enable livestreaming and remote participation, and several asked for more regular briefings to support legislative oversight of IT programs. The chair and members directed staff to schedule a security briefing and to include legislative IT in oversight planning for broader state IT projects the committee may review.

Ending: Moore said the office is available for follow‑up questions and will coordinate with Joint Fiscal Office and committee staff on timing for a security briefing and on requests for technical detail. No committee action or vote followed the briefing.