State auditor: Vermont needs clearer baselines and better oversight for major IT projects

Montpelier — Deputy State Auditor Tim Ash told the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee on Feb. 5 that Vermont’s management and public reporting of large state IT projects are inconsistent and often fail to show original baselines for cost and schedule, masking overruns and delays.

Ash, presenting the auditor’s review of six major projects, said the audit found “cost and schedule” increases across most projects and that ADS’s public dashboard and IT activity reporting used revised estimates rather than original baselines. "The transmission of information to the public from ADS about the status of these projects... was cryptic," he said.

The audit examined six projects including a Department for Children and Families (DCF) childcare payments system, two projects described as DII/enterprise interoperability work, a liquor and lottery licensing modernization, and two other agency modernization efforts. Ash cited examples the committee could quickly compare: a DMV core system listed with an estimated cost in the tens of millions and one DCF project whose original estimated completion and cost (about $3.6 million initially) had been pushed out and increased markedly in later reports.

Why it matters: these IT projects collectively represent funding in the millions to tens of millions of dollars, and legislators rely on summary reporting to prioritize oversight. The auditor told the committee that…