The Governor’s Office of Information Technology announced a major operational “realignment” Wednesday to overhaul how it supports the technology behind government services used by millions of Coloradans. As part of the change, the department is laying off 173 employees, or about 15% of its 1,150-person workforce.
The cuts, which are expected to save $4 million in the first full year and $8 million annually in the following years, are not linked to artificial intelligence use or the challenges of a state budget that faced a $1.5 billion shortfall, said David Edinger, OIT’s chief information officer and its executive director since November 2023. Rather, it was the heaps of negative feedback from the state auditor, legislative oversight bodies and its agency partners, which are other executive state agencies. OIT’s customer satisfaction scores have been dismal, he admitted.
“My goal was to move (scores) to at least 67%, or two out of every three people saying we’re a good partner. We haven’t been able to move that much since I got here. It went from 31 to 36 in the last survey,” he said. “We’re not going to get there through continuous improvement and tweaking around the edges. … All this feedback plus the data was saying it’s not working so we said, well, it’s time to scale up this (new) model.”
OIT may not be familiar to many Coloradans. But it’s the team working behind the scenes to protect the state’s digital networks from cybersecurity attacks, as well as supporting agency digital services that residents need to manage unemployment benefits, access public assistance programs like SNAP and Colorado’s Medicaid program, or figure out where their tax refund is.
Before OIT consolidated the state’s multiple executive departments in 2008, each essentially hired its own IT staff, set up an email program and bought their own computers. There were 16 IT support phone numbers at the time, according to an OIT announcement celebrating its 15-year anniversary. Now there’s one number.
More recently, the department has faced a lot of criticism from the Office of the State Auditor for not fully addressing recommendations to sufficiently meet cybersecurity resiliency. Rep. Brianna Titone has also grilled Edinger during Joint Technology Committee meetings about funding. The Arvada Democrat said OIT’s cash fund has been growing and was at $36 million this year, which “indicates they were overcharging divisions for services,” Titone said in an email. “I still have questions about how it got big so fast.”
An OIT spokesperson said the $36 million is in the process of being transferred to the state general fund and one-time credits have already been provided back to state agencies.
Something needed to change. A preliminary reorganization has been in the works since February and leadership shared details at earlier legislative committee hearings. Now, it’s official. Edinger’s last day is June 11, and he turns over the reins Monday to Sarah Tuneberg, OIT’s deputy director, who has led several successful projects while serving as director of OIT’s Colorado Digital Service.
Tuneberg’s success is credited to a system of smaller teams embedded with clients to build products that actually work, instead of using the traditional IT method of completing tasks and moving on. Her team worked with the Public Utilities Commission and got feedback from consumers as they developed the Colorado Energy Savings Navigator, which finds energy rebates for folks who answer a few questions. More than half of Coloradans who used the site went on to apply for a rebate, she said. In business-speak, it’s called product-oriented delivery, or POD, which is used by companies like Amazon and Google.
“One of the things that’s important and left out of that traditional IT — I’ll get you a laptop, I’ll get you internet access, I’ll secure your data — is that every single program that the state of Colorado delivers, every benefit, every service from a driver’s license to SNAP to getting a birth certificate has a digital service delivery component,” Tuneberg said. “Coloradans interact with the state of Colorado online digitally so we have to support agencies in delivering that service in an excellent way.”
It was time to transform the agency to an operation that has already been successful. POD gives more autonomy to those working with clients so decisions are made quickly, which can be more cost effective and streamlined since there are fewer layers of coordination, friction and middle managers.
“It’s a more efficient model that gets us closer by eliminating a lot of the bureaucracy we’ve built up in OIT over the years by trying to have this shared-service model where everything’s done the same way,” Edinger said. “This is going to do more with less.”
The 173 jobs no longer fit into the new system, though 98 new jobs have been created that do. Leaders hope that some of the impacted workers will qualify for new positions. Employees were told Wednesday.
“We don’t take the layoff lightly. It was an incredibly, unbelievably difficult decision that none of us wish we were making. So I would say that while the POD model is very much in the weeds, we’re trying to build a better future here,” Tuneberg said. “We really are trying to deliver for Coloradans in savings, in better digital services, in how do we meet people where they are in this sort of modern moment, and we recognize that it’s painful and I’m really sad about it.”
The office supports 31,000 state employees at 17 agencies like the Department of Agriculture and Department of Public Health and Environment. It also oversees the Colorado Broadband Office and supports the tech for organizations like History Colorado.
This is a developing story that may be updated.