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Committee advances TEBS budget and AI strategy, places feasibility study and three items on reconciliation list
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Summary
The Government Operations & Fiscal Policy Committee reviewed the FY27 TEBS budget, heard TEBSplans for AI governance and workforce development, and voted unanimously to add a $375,000 feasibility phase for an HHS community portal plus three TEBS items (Azure tertiary backup, accessibility software, NextGen refresh) to the council reconciliation list.
The Government Operations & Fiscal Policy Committee on Wednesday reviewed the Technology and Enterprise Business Solutions (TEBS) portion of the county executiveFY27 operating budget and moved several TEBS items to the councilreconciliation list.
TEBS staff told the committee the executive recommends a departmental FY27 total of $72,221,974, a slight decrease from last year. Staff highlighted six TEBS program areas and identified three items staff recommended for reconciliation consideration: a tertiary Azure backup, a digital accessibility compliance tool, and a Next Generation Technology Refresh proposed as a CIP amendment.
Gail, TEBSchief information officer, and the departmentchange-management team outlined an enterprise AI strategy centered on an "Ignite" product-delivery framework meant to intake use cases, measure return on investment and total cost of ownership upfront, and manage deployments across departments. "We're calling it Ignite," the change-management lead said, describing the process steps from discovery to scale to sustained operations.
Staff described two public-facing AI deployments as examples: the countyMonty chatbot (in iterative deployments) and an HR bot called Scout. TEBS said about 1,800 employees have completed an AI literacy program administered by the Office of Change Management and emphasized that continuous analyst oversight is required after deployment.
The committee also considered whether to fund an initial assessment of an HHS "community portal." Members recalled a joint GEO/HHS discussion and weighed a proposed $800,000 package. Committee staff recommended carving out an initial six-month feasibility phase focused on stakeholder interviews and platform integration testing. The chair summarized the suggested reconciliation ask as $375,000 for that first-phase assessment; the committee agreed to put that amount on reconciliation for the full council to consider.
TEBS briefed members on resiliency and equity-related investments: the department recommended a tertiary backup copy in Azure (to complement current backups and guard against regional outages), a $170,000 automated accessibility tool to maintain PDF and new-content compliance going forward, and a multi-year equipment refresh (NextGen Technology Refresh) to replace aging routers, switches and firewalls at an executive-requested amount of $22.6 million in FY27.
When the chair called for a voice vote to add the TEBS items and the $375,000 feasibility amount to the reconciliation list, the chair recorded the result as unanimous.
What's next: The committee will forward the TEBS budget with the reconciliation requests to the full council for final consideration. TEBS staff said they will provide additional materials to support the feasibility analysis and technical integration questions cited by committee members.
