Department of Technology, Management & Budget Chief Information Officer Laura Clark and Chief Procurement Officer Jared Ambrosier presented the department’s consolidated information-technology model, lifecycle risk management and procurement practices to the Michigan House Appropriations Subcommittee on General Government at a May 2025 meeting.

The presentation described a consolidated, “build once, serve many” approach that DTMB said reduces cost and risk by sharing infrastructure, unifying identity and access management, consolidating licenses and providing enterprise procurement vehicles. Clark said DTMB’s work underpins “how we supply services to Michigan’s residents, visitors, and businesses.”

DTMB emphasized why centralization matters: it provides a single login for state applications, enterprise license purchasing and more centralized cybersecurity controls. “Our adversaries only have to be right one time when they attack us, but our team needs to be right every single time they’re attacked,” Clark said, summarizing the department’s view on threat exposure and defensive burden.

The subcommittee heard several concrete figures DTMB presented: the agency supports more than 58,000 end-user devices, about 4,100 servers and roughly 1,700 business applications; the department said its cyber team blocked over 27,000,000 potentially malicious intrusion attempts in the past 30 days. Clark also noted that 73 counties have joined the Michigan Public Safety Communications System (MPSCS) and five more are in planning.

Procurement changes, pilot tools and supplier oversight

Ambrosier described alternative solicitation types DTMB uses to lower risk and test solutions before full contract awards. He explained the request-for-solution (RFS) format and a competitive proof-of-concept solicitation that lets the state run pilots before deciding on a long-term contract. “The competitive proof of concept is a try-before-you-buy approach,” Ambrosier said.

DTMB said it includes service-level agreements and supplier-relationship management in contracts, and surveys program managers periodically to measure vendor performance. The department also said its statewide IT category-management approach supports not only state agencies but about 1,400 MyDeal members — local governments, school districts and other public entities — and that those members used DTMB IT contracts for substantial purchases in fiscal year 2024 (amount as stated to the committee: “over a hundred and $20,000,000”).

IT lifecycle, modernization initiatives and user-centered design

Clark walked the committee through DTMB’s IT lifecycle — from agency need and readiness assessment, through procurement, implementation, closeout and maintenance — and described a four-part set of strategic initiatives: a DevSecOps approach to modular application development, a Cloud Smart multi-cloud hosting strategy, a Zero Trust security initiative and a digital experience program using human-centered design (HCD).

Clark said DTMB has applied HCD testing to its MILogin product and that changes based on user testing reduced abandonment rates and lowered call-center volume. The department has created a prequalified vendor pool for user-experience work and said it has taken steps to recruit internal UX staff.

Awards and external guidance

DTMB noted recognition from the Center for Digital Government (an A grade in the Digital State survey), NASEO and NASPO, and procurement awards including the George Cronin Award. Clark and Ambrosier also said DTMB has been aligning where appropriate with recommendations from outside groups referenced in the presentation, including the U.S. Digital Response and some 18F best practices.

Project updates and questions from lawmakers

Lawmakers used the Q&A to press DTMB on contract length, modular contracting, license utilization and specific systems. On contract length and size, DTMB said it “rightsizes” contract terms depending on the project and that some large enterprise purchases — for example, the statewide ERP system — require multiyear investments. Ambrosier said DTMB will evaluate each procurement to determine appropriate term and structure.

Committee members asked about a Department of State system for campaign and personal disclosure reports that a lawmaker described as failing to display reports and causing a log-in blank screen ahead of a filing deadline. DTMB indicated it owns the contract but that the solution is vendor-supported; a committee member criticized the service and called the situation “the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen in state government when it comes to transparency.” (comment attributed to Rep. Schneider)

On unemployment insurance modernization, DTMB told the committee that the new UIA system is in system integration testing for phase 1 and that phase 1 remains on track for a December go-live; the vendor for that work was identified as Deloitte. DTMB said the “mitten” project discussed in committee is vendor-hosted and vendor-managed and that DTMB has had limited interaction beyond procurement involvement.

Information DTMB said it would provide later

During questioning DTMB did not provide certain numbers requested on the spot, including current counts of unused software licenses and a full breakdown of how many procurement contracts are delivered on a modular basis. DTMB told the committee it would follow up with members on the availability of license counts, the percentage of modular contracts and other requested details.

No formal committee votes were taken on IT policy in the hearing; the meeting concluded after routine motions to approve minutes from the previous meeting and to excuse absent members, both agreed to by unanimous consent.

The department said its strategic initiatives are at differing stages: the digital-experience work dates to about 2021, DevSecOps education and tooling have been underway for several years, Cloud Smart procurements and provisioning are underway, and Zero Trust work is in initiation and early design with some funding already appropriated. Clark said many implementation projects carry discrete timelines even if the higher-level strategic plan does not list fixed dates for each initiative.

The presentation and the committee’s questions illustrated the tradeoffs lawmakers posed between centralization and agility, vendor management and in-house capacity — and left several follow-up items for DTMB to provide to the subcommittee.