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 county website and payment portals to school connectivity and emergency radio interoperability.

Major budget drivers and planned changes

- Cloud migration and operating-cost shifts: DTS is moving its on‑premises enterprise records management system (ERMS) to the cloud. Hartel said capital dollars will pay initial migration work but that the recurring hosting and managed‑service costs will shift into the operating budget.

- Licensing and contractual increases: the department cited rising costs for software licensing and contracted labor (board members asked about a roughly $600,000 contractual increase referenced in the briefing). Hartel said Prism (the county’s financial/HR/payroll system), Jira and other enterprise tools have greater license counts and more frequent vendor updates in a SaaS model.

- New operational tools: proposed operating investments include a network‑monitoring/troubleshooting service, and a test‑automation service (Opkey) to support quarterly Prism updates and reduce manual testing burden.

- Resiliency connections: DTS described an additional geo‑diverse fiber connection to Equinix to strengthen resiliency for county-hosted systems.

- Cost reductions and staff adjustments: to close the fiscal gap the department proposes targeted reductions including flattening one layer of management across three divisions, converting some contractors to full‑time positions where financially preferable, and reducing legacy telephony costs by moving to Teams phones and reassessing mobile‑device allocations.

Board questions, cyber risk and near‑term exposures

Board members pressed DTS on cybersecurity and operational risk. Hartel said the county’s cybersecurity posture has improved and that DTS tracks a National Cyber Security Rating (a self‑assessment aligned to NIST guidance); she said CISA and DHS recommend a score of 5 and DTS is targeting a 6. Hartel told the board that the core security team remains in place and that automation and tabletop exercises have helped keep mean time to resolution steady even as attacks increase.

On staffing risk, Board Member J.D. Spain asked whether losing particular managers would materially degrade security operations. Hartel replied, “I have full confidence in what they do. The ability for them to continue is not affected at all.”

Connectivity and funding pressures

DTS highlighted the county’s Connect Arlington fiber and wireless programs, noting very high uptime metrics (DTS cited “99.99%” general internet uptime and 20 minutes of annual downtime for Connect Arlington, figures offered as operational context) and said a PEG funding decline will create a roughly $400,000 shortfall for Connect Arlington in FY27.

The chair and board members asked DTS to provide more detail on contractual pressures and whether the county is receiving commensurate new functionality from higher license and contract costs. DTS staff said much of the contractual growth reflects SaaS pricing and the recurring costs of quarterly vendor‑driven updates for systems such as Prism.

Follow‑ups and next steps

Board members requested follow‑up briefings: examples included a deeper look at the contractual increase drivers, more details on the cyber rating and specific automation actions being pursued, and options for the manager to consider around the proposed staffing changes. DTS staff said they will return with more detailed options and that they will continue pursuing automation and resiliency while trying to limit impacts to mission‑critical services.

Ending note

Board members and an outside review participant praised DTS’s recent achievements, but several said they wanted clearer, quantifiable tradeoffs between recurring operating costs for cloud/subscription services and the reductions the county will realize from smaller on‑premises infrastructure.