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Thurston County IT outlines phased plan to meet state .gov requirement; staffing and cost uncertainties remain
Summary
IT staff told commissioners the county must move to a .gov domain by July 2027, has secured $194,000 in initial grant funding and received a phase‑1 vendor proposal for about $149,500; staff warned migration could disrupt logins, applications and email without careful phased work and communication.
Thurston County IT staff on March 4 briefed the Board of County Commissioners on a state requirement that counties migrate to a .gov domain by July 2027 and outlined a three‑phase plan to limit disruption.
Sherry Elk, the county's IT director, and Evan Hallmark, network supervisor, described the technical scope: authentication systems, Azure Active Directory dependencies, file‑share and database permissions, and numerous applications with hard‑coded domain references that must be found and reconfigured. "Migrating from one domain to another is not just changing the name," Hallmark said. "A lot of applications have hard coded domain names that we have to find and reconfigure." He warned the transition "can be very disruptive" and could cause locked accounts, broken applications or email outages if not phased and validated.
Staff said the county has applied for and been awarded initial grant funding of about $194,000 to support the work; a vendor proposal for phase 1 (readiness and planning) is priced at approximately $149,500. Hallmark said the vendor can only provide a firm estimate for full costs after the phase‑1 inventory and assessment, because the team needs to map devices, users, applications and dependencies before a total scope is known.
Commissioners pressed staff about whether the requirement is funded by the state; Commissioner Carolina Mahia called it an "unfunded mandate," and staff confirmed they were not aware of additional statewide funding to cover the full migration. Staff described a phased approach: Phase 0 (requirements/gap inventory), Phase 1 (readiness and planning), Phase 2 (preparation and new domain controller/configuration work), and Phase 3 (full migration and validation). Communication plans for employees and external constituencies were emphasized as essential to prevent constituent confusion after email addresses change.
Staff said they will return a vendor phase‑1 deliverable and recommended board consideration of grant acceptance at an upcoming meeting. No board appropriation for the total project cost was requested at this session.
Next steps: staff will complete the inventory/report in phase 1, return cost estimates for subsequent phases and present any recommended contract or budget requests for board consideration.
