States' IT modernization dreams run into budget realities

by Chris Teale, Route Fifty

DENVER — The Texas Department of Information Resources announced last week that its Texas by Texas digital assistant, known as TxT, now has more than 10 million users and offers more services, including the ability to upgrade a driver's license and renew a boat registration.

It's part of a massive movement across all 50 states to digitize and modernize their services as residents look to engage with their governments online and obtain licenses and permits and carry out other functions that were traditionally in-person and paper-based.

But the tightening of state budgets and ongoing uncertainty on the state of future federal funding has some worried that those modernization efforts may have to slow down considerably, or be shelved altogether. The National Association of State Chief Information Officers' annual State CIO Survey indicated that times might get tight.

While half of those surveyed said their CIO organization had seen an increased budget and received money in some form to modernize, they said they expect to feel the effects of federal cutbacks soon. NASCIO Executive Director Doug Robinson said during a panel discussion at the group's annual conference last week in Denver that states are already seeing revenue shortfalls and so may be asked to "pare back" their tech spending, or "hold the line."

It makes for an uncertain time, and leaves state technology leaders with tough choices as they try to balance modernization with being good stewards of public dollars.

"People were getting used to some of the federal funding and some of the alternate funding sources that were coming into their operation to clean up some of the tech debt," Shawn Rodriguez, vice president for state and local government and education at World Wide Technology, said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference. "But that has come to an abrupt halt, or at least many think it has."

States have tried to put some money behind their efforts through supplemental technology modernization or innovation funds.