Syracuse city officials defend reorganization and roughly $4.3 million API budget as investment in in-house capacity

Syracuse City officials presented a reorganization of the city’s API (digital services and analytics) functions and defended a roughly $4.3 million budget request as necessary to build in-house capacity and support cross-department technology projects.

The reorganization, administration officials said, aims to better align IT, digital services, API and data analytics to reduce long-term reliance on outside contractors and centralize software licensing costs. Corey Dunham, chief administrative officer, said "the desired direction from the administration is to build that capacity in house and decrease our reliance on outside contractors." He said the administration wants the city to retain institutional knowledge rather than depend on long-term consultants.

City presenters told councilors that the API budget includes two major cost categories: personnel and software. The proposed software line for next year is roughly $2.7 million, up from about $2.1 million the prior year; presenters said that increase is driven in part by Microsoft 365 license consolidation, inflation on software-as-a-service contracts, a set‑aside for a possible payroll/HCM system if the city chooses a different solution, and price increases after two vendor buyouts. Presenters said some of the Microsoft 365 licensing costs were previously double-counted in the IT budget and should be centralized in API’s software line.

Officials said the reorganization itself is…