Delaware’s Department of Technology and Information asked the Joint Finance Committee for an approximately $8 million increase to its budget for fiscal year 2027.
DTI serves technology needs for all three of Delaware’s branches of government. Acting Chief Information Officer Jordan Schulties told the Joint Finance Committee Wednesday that about $7 million dollars of that ask will pay for cloud infrastructure, a new web security system, and expansion of online portal services.
DTI operates two internal data centers but also added storage to run operations on Microsoft Cloud. That means investment in infrastructure to store information on two more of its data centers, operated out of state.
Schulties said her office anticipates use of data centers will continue to grow and further investment in the area will be necessary in future budgets.
"We'd have to shut down production of state services that agencies and citizens are relying on," she said. "Especially since 77% of our servers now live in that environment."
The state plans to replace its VPN system with a new, more extensive employee verification system that’s expected to cost more than $1.5 million. It also plans to spend more than $400,000 to shore up security for administrator accounts.
The state moved its large-scale operations off its own data centers to one in Nebraska and one in North Carolina. The state had previously used federal money to fund this effort, which she said increases security for state servers and data.
The state used America Rescue Plan money to increase security of its government tech services and expand its availability during the pandemic, Dirksen said.
"The money that funded this project has expired," she told the JFC. "And we are moving to an ongoing operational state, because it is a service provider. There is a monthly cost associated with that."
The expiration of the federal funds increases visibility of the added tech and security costs in the state's budget, she said.
"The heavy investment that we made with ARPA alleviated the need for state funding to do a lot of those things," she said. "But it still got us to where we needed to be to meet those needs in that moment
The office’s total budget request is approximately $69 million, up from this year’s $61 million.
This story has been corrected. Its initial publication attributed quotes to DTI's strategic communications manager Christina Dirksen.
