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IT department requests modest FY27 increase, highlights cybersecurity and AI pilots
Summary
Wilmington's IT director told the finance committee that the FY27 request is $11.7 million (a $68,000 increase) and that the department is funding endpoint security, an expanded VPN, a four-year computer lease program and a phased pilot for limited, secured AI access.
Wilmington's information-technology director presented the department's FY27 operating request on April 20 and described priorities that center on security, software licensing and standardizing city endpoints.
Director Damon (transcript spelling varies) May told the finance committee the proposed IT operating budget totals $11.7 million, a $68,000 or 0.6% increase over the prior year. He said key changes include higher software licensing costs (Salesforce development for land use and inspections; Microsoft 365 license coverage), a planned four-year lease to bulk-purchase and standardize laptops and endpoints, and $82,000 allocated for workforce cybersecurity training.
The department said it will fund a dedicated IT security leadership role split out from the CIO position to bolster incident response, policy and training. IT staff described an endpoint-monitoring arrangement that pairs new endpoint management software with 24/7 external threat monitoring, and said they have scaled back consultant spending while preserving specialized managed-service support for roles such as chief information security officer, network architecture and database administration.
May said the city is taking a cautious approach to generative AI: access is currently blocked for the general user population while targeted pilots and secure use cases are developed; training and monitoring will be required before broader rollouts.
On operations, IT described consolidating voice-over-IP services and buying VPN and storage gear for public-safety needs. The department said various Microsoft outages reported elsewhere did not cause citywide downtime and that an internal January outage lasted about an hour and 20 minutes and was resolved by staff.
Ending: Council thanked IT staff for rapid response and maintenance; IT said it would return with a final quote for a multi-year device lease and continue to refine AI pilot security controls.
