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NDIT outlines enterprise digitization, technical-debt tracking and mainframe phase-down
Summary
NDIT presented a digital-maturity program to the Senate committee that includes application scorecards, enterprise architecture governance, a mainframe analysis showing two agencies remaining and an estimated two bienniums to decommission the mainframe.
North Dakota Information Technology told the appropriations committee that the agency is formalizing enterprise architecture and technical-debt reporting to help agencies plan modernization work and reduce long-term cybersecurity and workforce risks.
"We now actually have these reports for 19 agencies across state government," Craig Felkley, Chief Technology Officer at NDIT, said as he described application inventory and scorecards that plot business value against technical health. He said the scorecards help identify whether applications should be retained, refreshed, replatformed or retired.
Felkley said enterprise architecture recommendations that emerged from a vendor assessment are being implemented across people, process, tools and governance. The state opened a maturity assessment and is using scorecards that combine business-criticality measures with technical criteria such as maintainability, security and interoperability. He said some applications have high business value but low technical health because they run on unsupported frameworks or legacy stacks.
On the mainframe, Felkley said the state is down to two major agencies still on mainframe platforms. A high-level analysis to inform modernization timelines is underway; Felkley estimated about two bienniums before a complete decommissioning given current projects.
Felkley also summarized other digitization investments funded last biennium: a new industry-leading call-center platform migrated more than 500 agents and 60 call centers; capital-complex networking and door-security upgrades are underway; and the state is piloting AI tools (Microsoft Copilot) with controls and data-tagging to limit sensitive data exposure. He said the digitization package also supports adoption of low-code platforms to migrate some legacy agency applications.
Senators asked for examples of high-business-value/low-technical-health systems; Felkley cited applications built on unsupported development frameworks and recommended replatforming onto modern, supported platforms. He said the scorecards and inventory will allow the state to measure technical debt movement over time and make budgeting for modernization more transparent.
Ending: NDIT framed the scorecards and enterprise architecture changes as a foundation for more coordinated, predictable IT investments across state agencies.
