Houston IT department seeks $143 million for FY26 as consolidation and public-safety needs drive gap in capital plan

HITS Director Lisa Kent told Houston City Council members during a presentation that the department’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026 operating budget is about $143 million, a 38.8% increase largely driven by the consolidation of IT staff from the Houston Police Department, Parks and Recreation, Legal and parts of Public Works into the Technology Services Department (HITS).

Kent said the consolidation creates a larger operating budget while also exposing a substantial gap between the city’s capital-improvement requests for technology and the available CIP capacity. "We won't be able to close that gap with just efficiencies," Kent said, urging both the administration and council to address the shortfall for public-safety technology.

The nut of the presentation was that consolidation both raises the HITS budget and highlights unmet capital needs. Kent said HITS now manages 18 programs; roughly 53% of HITS operating costs support infrastructure, 36% support public safety, and 11% support “government that works.” She told council members the department’s FY26 ask reflects the addition of roughly 90 funded HPD IT positions transferred into HITS and other personnel moves that raise the department’s baseline costs.

Kent outlined a package of efficiency measures intended to reduce costs without cutting core services. Those measures include downgrading 6,000 of the city’s roughly 21,000 Microsoft 365 licenses for eligible frontline workers to a lower-cost license (a change Kent said would save about $2.1 million), eliminating duplicated software (Kent cited transition from Tableau to Power BI and put enterprise-app reductions at nearly $569,000), trimming wireless and telecom waste (about $1.282 million in identified telecom…