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Supervisors question deep cuts to Department of Technology; committee defers contested reductions
Summary
The Department of Technology agreed with many analyst recommendations but disputed cuts worth roughly $823,041 for maintenance, equipment and training. Supervisors warned that further reductions could undermine citywide IT consolidation work, accepted undisputed closeouts, and deferred disputed items until Thursday for more information.
The Department of Technology told the Budget and Finance Committee it accepted 16 of 22 proposed cuts but disagreed with a set of reductions involving maintenance, equipment and training that the department said were needed to preserve uptime and support citywide IT initiatives.
John Walton, director of the Department of Technology, said the department agreed with cuts totaling about $816,200 but could not accept other recommendations totaling roughly $823,041. Walton explained maintenance and equipment lines support data-center and network uptime; the department seeks roughly 99% uptime for critical systems and said rolling back maintenance would threaten that availability.
Supervisor Carmen Chu and other supervisors expressed concern about deep cuts to a central IT department the Board has tasked with consolidating e-mail and servers and implementing master contracts. Chu said she was worried the city risked being "penny wise and pound foolish" by starving central IT at the moment it is relied upon for consolidation.
Budget office and legislative analyst staff reviewed historical expenditures and said the department had repeatedly underexpended some lines in recent years, which informed their recommended cuts. Supervisor Kim said she wanted more detail tying each contested cut to specific DT projects before deciding.
The committee accepted undisputed project closeouts and the items where department and analyst concurred (about $1.1M total) and left contested items for further consideration on Thursday, asking DT to provide more specific explanations of how the disputed reductions would affect planned consolidation work.
