Arlington board reviews Technology Services budget as department moves infrastructure to cloud and trims management layers

Acting Department Director Holly Hartel told the Arlington County Board on Feb. 27 that the Department of Technology Services is proposing a budget that shifts several capital-funded functions into the operating budget as the county migrates systems to the cloud, while also trimming a management layer in a push to reduce costs.

Hartel said the department touches “everything that happens at the county at some point” — from payments and property search to schools and public Wi‑Fi — and that DTS must balance stability, cyber security and new investments as it adjusts to tighter county funding.

DTS’s presentation described four core teams — infrastructure and operations, enterprise applications, customer experience and digital innovation/cloud — and highlighted recent achievements including consecutive Digital Counties awards, an enterprise document search feature that uses AI, and a multi‑year uptime record. Hartel briefed the board that DTS handled nearly 18,000 support tickets in calendar 2024 and completed roughly 482 change events during that period.

Why it matters: the department’s choices — which services to move to subscription models, which integrations to prioritize, and where to reduce staff — will affect county operations ranging from the…