Senator Brock urges continued state IT oversight, cites inventory gaps and past system failures

Senator Randy Brock, a member of the Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee, told the Senate Committee on Institutions on Jan. 28 that state information-technology oversight has improved since JITOC began in 2016 but still suffers from incomplete inventories, fragmented leadership and residual high-risk systems.

Brock said the committee’s early work established basic priorities—counting systems, rating security and identifying which applications needed repair—but that the effort was limited by time and resources. “There was no independent or truly independent, chief information officer for the state… and you sort of had the wild veil,” Brock said, describing a history in which projects were developed inside agencies without enterprise coordination.

The matter matters because the state’s core services depend on numerous interlinked systems. Brock told senators that JITOC produced an initial inventory and used a red/yellow/green rating to prioritize attention. He said the Agency of Digital Services and the Joint Fiscal Office now hold updated inventories and dashboards, and that those records should be used as the committee’s baseline. “Right now, the agency of digital services has that and also, a JFO has it,” Brock said.

Brock gave examples of both problematic and improved projects. He characterized an earlier DMV replacement attempt as a failure and said a later, second attempt “went relatively well” compared with the first. He also said initial attempts to replace a military-connect system “went terribly” and referenced a roughly $1,000,000 loss on that effort. On unemployment systems, Brock said the pandemic exposed weaknesses in an already aging system and cited a reported loss of about $55,000,000 in improper claims over the decade before 2015.

Committee members pressed for more detail. “How many systems did you find? I forgot,” asked Senator Inglis. Brock said he did not have the list with him but offered to provide the updated inventory and related materials from the Agency of Digital Services and the Joint Fiscal Office.

Brock described steps JITOC took to improve oversight: building an inventory, applying risk ratings, and commissioning independent technical reviewers for large projects. He said the committee also used executive sessions to discuss security-sensitive findings. He credited current staffing, including one oversight staffer he named as Alicia Gautman, and a newer chief information officer and central IT organization for reducing the prior “cowboy approach” to system development.

Senators asked for the original red/yellow/green list and for Agency of Digital Services’ product dashboard to be shared with the committee. Brock said he would provide the earlier materials and that he was willing to return for follow-up hearings. The committee also noted that the House has formed a separate committee covering information technology and that continued cross-branch coordination would be necessary when the Legislature is not in session.

No formal motions or votes were recorded on the IT item during the Jan. 28 meeting. Committee members said they plan to request the inventories and December reports Brock referenced, and to schedule additional testimony from Agency of Digital Services and other staffers identified during the hearing.

Looking ahead, Brock and committee members emphasized that oversight requires time, staff and repeated review: inventories must be kept current, security risks tracked, and independent technical reviews used on major procurements to reduce the chance of repeated failures.

Ending — The committee concluded the session after asking Brock to return and requesting the inventories and reports from Agency of Digital Services and the Joint Fiscal Office. The committee scheduled other items for later in the afternoon, including a corrections workforce briefing.