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State IT department asks committee to loosen statutory deadlines, modernize statewide IT plan
Summary
North Dakota Information Technology told the Senate State and Local Government Committee it wants to replace rigid, multi‑year reporting requirements in statute with a more flexible process and a real‑time dashboard; the agency asked the committee to allow it to return with targeted amendments after the hearing.
The Senate State and Local Government Committee heard testimony on Senate Bill 2048, an agency housekeeping bill that would change how North Dakota creates and maintains a statewide information technology plan.
Corey Mach, chief information officer for the North Dakota Information Technology Department, told the committee SB 2048 "was intended to modernize how we create and maintain our statewide IT plan." He said the measure would move statutory language away from fixed, point‑in‑time reporting requirements and toward a process that reflects faster development cycles.
Mach said the existing statutory language (cited in testimony as North Dakota Century Code 54‑59‑11) dates to 1999, when the agency was created, and that previous iterations already moved reporting deadlines over time to align with agency budget cycles. He described changes made in 2009 that removed a statutory requirement tying agency budgets to the IT plan and said the old two‑year plan model now produces documents that are quickly out of date.
"Today, you go through two different versions of a cell phone in two years," Mach said, arguing the state now uses a dashboard that provides near‑real‑time status on projects—budget, milestones and schedule—so statutory language should permit that flexibility rather than prescribe a fixed reporting cadence.
Committee members questioned how the proposal would affect current deadlines and interbranch cooperation. Senator Chuck Wallen asked whether a quarterly reporting phrase in the bill should be changed to monthly or weekly; Mach said the department prefers removing specific cadence language and instead preserving the obligation to cooperate and make status available without hardwired deadlines. Senator Jose Castaneda raised whether an existing extension provision (which allows the chief information officer to grant extensions) should remain; Mach said that language dates to 2009 and may no longer be necessary under a less prescriptive approach. Senator Judy Lee urged caution about putting too many specifics in statute, saying rules or administrative practice are easier to change.
Mach repeatedly asked the committee to allow NDIT to work with the new administration, the governor's office and affected agencies and return with amendments before final action on SB 2048. The committee took no formal vote on the bill at the hearing.
The committee also pressed on the treatment of the legislative and judicial branches. Mach said the bill requests authority to "ask" for cooperation from those branches but cannot compel them for constitutional separation‑of‑powers reasons; he promised to consult the IT coordinators for those branches about any time standards the committee might want to consider.
By the end of the hearing, NDIT requested time to submit targeted amendments that would better align code with how the agency now manages and reports IT work.
