Idaho ITS seeks $10 million cybersecurity and resilience fund, plans ongoing IT consolidation

The Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) told the Joint Finance Preparation Committee on March 12, 2025, that Idaho needs a dedicated cybersecurity and resilience fund and that the agency’s multi‑year IT consolidation work will continue into the 2026 budget cycle.

Budget analyst Christopher LaHosa summarized ITS’s recent growth, noting ITS has absorbed many agency IT staffs since 2019 and that full‑time position counts have climbed accordingly. The agency’s administration and accounting services fund is forecast to be exhausted by the end of this fiscal year without additional action, LaHosa said.

ITS administrator Alberto Gonzales described a multi‑step proposal the governor recommends: create a new cybersecurity and IT resilience fund, authorize a $10,000,000 cash transfer from the general fund into the new fund this year, and give ITS continuous appropriation authority to spend the fund on enterprise security, emergency connectivity, infrastructure investments and hardware replacements. LaHosa emphasized the recommendation follows negotiations and restructuring…