JFO IT consultant briefs Senate committee on major state IT projects and oversight risks

Lisa Gobin, the Joint Fiscal Office's contracted IT consultant, told the Vermont Senate Committee on IT and Institutions on a recent committee meeting that she is monitoring a portfolio of large state IT efforts and has identified both progress and persistent risks, particularly for the statewide enterprise resource planning (ERP) replacement and the unemployment insurance modernization.

Gobin, who described her role as producing targeted advisory memos and independent reviews for the JFO, told the committee she evaluates projects across a set of standard areas including project justification, clarity of purpose, organizational support, project leadership, project management, financial considerations, technical approach and risk management. "The CIO's independent review is required by statute, and it's if a project is over $1,000,000, they're required," Gobin said, explaining how her work complements but differs from the Office of the Chief Information Officer and ADS reviews.

The consultant said several projects show measurable success. The Department of Motor Vehicles modernization has completed a vehicle-services rollout and began driver-services work in mid-2024; Gobin said the project has met deadlines and remained on budget. A judiciary networking project that received $4,600,000 to rewire courthouses and add public Wi-Fi and redundancy completed its work within a year and is being closed out, she said.

But Gobin voiced caution about two other major undertakings. On the Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment initiative (IENE) within the Agency of Human Services, she noted a program history dating to 2009 and earlier funding rounds (she referenced a circa-2012 appropriation near $9,000,000). The IENE team has worked to refine requirements and must satisfy federal review and an independent verification and validation (IV&V) vendor as part of federal funding conditions; Gobin said the IENE bid process was recent and "bids are due January 28th" (the date referenced in her review).

On the unemployment insurance (UI) modernization, Gobin summarized the project as comprised of a public portal (initially funded with $3,500,000) plus a larger backend implementation. She said the vendor implementation contract was roughly $30,000,000 with an operating budget line of about $14,000,000 over five years and that the combined net total for the initiative has approached the mid-40 millions. Gobin said project scope and deliverable sequencing changed during contracting'the state and vendor consolidated separate tax and benefits modules into a single deliverable'which she viewed as a prudent adjustment.

Gobin raised the strongest concerns about the state's ERP effort, in which the administration selected Workday as the software platform via a cooperative contract and then entered into a Workday agreement before the state completed a detailed needs assessment and a state-specific RFP process. "By not doing your own RFP process to find your ERP vendor, you haven't documented all your own requirements and what needs to be done," she said, warning that gaps between current legacy systems (including VISION, STARS and FARS) and the new solution could require substantial additional work and cost. Gobin noted she found evidence that some other states declined to implement Workday's financial module for comparable legacy systems and said that, without a thorough gap analysis and business validation, "there will be a time this money that's been allocated for this project is not enough for this project." She recommended oversight steps to bring business owners for legacy systems into requirement reviews and to quantify business (staffing/augmentation) costs that are sometimes omitted from ADS technical budgets.

Committee members asked about the committee's role in oversight. Gobin said the committee can play an oversight function by scrutinizing funding requests and prioritization but that day-to-day reviews are performed by ADS, the CIO's independent review, JFO and other established review bodies. She also described her method: she requests artifacts, interviews project staff, and reviews ADS and enterprise project management materials as part of her targeted JFO reviews.

Gobin characterized project risk areas that routinely arise: data migration complexity, incomplete requirements before contracting, evolving vendor approaches, and omitted business costs such as staff augmentation. She said some projects, notably IENE, are required by federal funders to include an IV&V vendor to provide third-party verification.

The committee did not take formal action during the briefing. Gobin said JITOC (the state's information-technology oversight body) has approved the release of funds for the ERP project so the state has started the implementation phase, and she said she will continue to monitor the projects and report back when new milestones or requirements are available.

Gobin closed by urging continued scrutiny of requirements, clarifying business costs, and involving program leads for legacy systems in the requirement-gathering and gap-analysis phases so the legislature can make informed funding decisions.