A plan launched five years ago under former Gov. Bill Ritter to consolidate the state’s information-technology functions has made little progress, according to a state audit.
The plan initiated in 2007
has been hindered by changing managers, limited resources and resistance from agencies, the Ernst & Young audit found.
The consolidation was intended to merge the information-technology functions of 17
agencies and 1,100 employees into the Office of Information Technology under the governor. The consolidation also would oversee several thousand contractors and manage $250 million in operating funds.
The effort aims to save $42 million over three years.
“We’re not creating a new bureaucracy,” Ritter said in 2008 to tout the reorganization. “We’re taking existing resources and making them more efficient and effective.”
But the audit found things not going according to plan.
“While there have been accomplishments, the consolidation process has been slow and hampered by leadership changes, budget and resource constraints, an undeveloped governance framework and organizational resistance,” the audit said. “For example, two of the consolidation’s largest infrastructure projects, e-mail and data center consolidation, have made little progress.”
The effort to consolidate the state’s 39 data centers into two was started in early 2010,
but it is not done and the state still uses “redundant and incompatible e-mail systems.”
The audit found that the Office of Information Technology did not have a good handle on purchases by information-technology divisions and whether those expenditures lined up with the overall IT goals.
And auditors also noted the office did not have a centralized and accurate inventory of IT assets statewide. Without such an inventory, it’s difficult for the office to leverage its purchase power and make good business decisions, auditors said.
Also, the Office of Information Technology has not analyzed employee positions and responsibilities to look for inefficiencies and overlap or provided training based on identified skill gaps, the audit said.
Information Technology officials generally agreed with the audit and said they were working to address the issues.
