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Vermont Senate Institutions Committee begins defining oversight, funding approach for state IT projects
Summary
At a Jan. 16 meeting, committee members and fiscal staff discussed where information technology oversight and funding belong in the legislature, risks on large projects such as an enterprise resource planning effort, and plans to invite the Agency of Digital Services and an independent reviewer to testify.
Catherine Dunham, chief fiscal officer for the Vermont Legislature, told the Senate Institutions Committee on Jan. 16 that the newly broadened committee must clarify its jurisdiction over information technology and how the state will pay for expensive, fast-changing projects.
"I'm not a lawyer," Dunham said, adding that the committee can draw on the legislature's independent IT reviewer and legislative counsel as it defines its role. "IT projects get funded in the budget bill. For a period of time, they're in a capital bill."
The discussion focused on three practical challenges: defining which IT matters fall under the committee's purview (including broadband and data privacy), deciding whether IT belongs in capital or operating budgets, and learning from past projects to reduce failure risk.
Why it matters: Vermont agencies are undertaking multi-million-dollar IT efforts that affect services statewide. Dunham flagged a large Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project that she described as "enormous" and said the Joint…
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