The Legislature’s interim Information Technology Committee is recommending that the IT Department continue with its unification project.
IT had earlier recommended that IT functions in state government should be consolidated. The 2019 Session passed a measure to do that with some state cabinet level agencies.
"Two years is not enough to have usable data," said IT committee chairman Rep. Corey Muck (D-Grand Forks). "We do agree the effort should be continued, and there should be reasonable attempts to modify, or include new agencies in that pilot project."
Mock said there are some agencies who have shown interest in getting involved with the project, such as the Bank of North Dakota. And he said the Department of Public Instruction could also be a part of it. But Mock said other agencies have concerns.
"The state Water Commission, for example, testified earlier that it did not want to be unified, because of some specialized services they wanted to keep in-house, and those wold not conform well to a unified system," Mock said. "The Attorney General's office did not want to be unified, because of the sensitivity of their data, as well as a variety of legal requirements."
Mock said over the last two years under the pilot project, 96 full-time-equivalent positions working on information technology were transferred from their home agencies to ITD.
