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ITS asks Legislature for staff and procurement overhaul, outlines five IT initiatives
Summary
Mississippi Information Technology Services told the Appropriations subcommittee it is requesting salary and contractual increases and 19 new positions to support procurement modernization, artificial intelligence, a cloud center of excellence, expanded digital services and an innovation fund.
Dr. Ojeran, an Information Technology Services (ITS) official, told the Appropriations Subcommittee that ITS is asking for roughly a 12% increase in salaries and FTEs, 19 new positions and a roughly 10% increase in contractual services to support five strategic initiatives: procurement modernization, artificial intelligence governance and innovation, a cloud center of excellence, expanded digital services and creation of an innovation fund.
The request is tied to what ITS presented as rapid growth in agency technology spending: "Spending on technology in government through dollars that are appropriated by the legislature is up 22 to 30% over 3 to 5 years," Ojeran said, and ITS needs additional capacity to help agencies procure and run shared technology.
Why it matters: ITS runs centralized services used across state government (the statewide network, a Tier 3 data center and enterprise cybersecurity) and positions itself as a shared-services provider. ITS argued additional staff and contractual authority are needed so it can vet procurements, support cloud migrations, manage AI adoption, and produce repeatable, shared solutions for agencies.
On procurement, ITS said it launched a Procurement Modernization…
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