Maryland unveils new strategy, builds technical acquisition team to overhaul state IT procurement

Maryland’s Department of Information Technology (DoIT) is overhauling the state’s technology procurement process with a new strategic framework and technical acquisition team aimed at streamlining IT purchases, reducing costs and accelerating technology investments. 

The new framework, debuted Thursday by DoIT Secretary and State Chief Information Officer Katie Savage, is intended to improve purchasing decisions. The strategy introduces a centralized intake process, or “single front door,” through which agencies will bring technology challenges to DoIT rather than approaching the department with a specific product they want to buy. 

The creation of the state’s first dedicated technical acquisition team is a central component of implementing this new strategy, and the team will feature procurement professionals, software engineers, product managers, user experience researchers and designers, Savage said. The team will help agencies identify their technology needs, evaluate potential solutions and determine whether existing state systems can meet those needs before proceeding with any new purchases. 

State IT leaders across the country have increasingly called for a shift away from fragmented, agency-by-agency purchasing toward more coordinated procurement strategies that prioritize statewide needs, reduce duplicative spending and align technology investments with broader modernization goals. Procurement has also become a central part of conversations around AI adoption, cybersecurity and digital government, with CIOs pointing to lengthy acquisition timelines, outdated contracting processes and challenges evaluating rapidly evolving technologies as persistent barriers.

Savage said that DoIT has historically operated an IT intake process in which agencies submit requests for technology, but the process has largely focused on determining whether an existing contract could be used or whether a new purchase was needed, rather than evaluating if the requested technology addressed an actual business need.

For example, she said that an agency requesting a new customer relationship management (CRM) system might be directed to utilize existing platforms without a deeper assessment of the problem it was trying to solve. Savage said the state increasingly recognizes that simply providing agencies with technology isn’t enough, and that DoIT must ensure those investments deliver meaningful outcomes.

“We want to take it a step further and say, ‘let’s unpack why you think you need a CRM system. Like, what are you actually trying to accomplish?’ And oftentimes, the answer — it might be like the CRM is not actually the right solution, or it is, but there’s some kind of extra layer of implementation that they need,” Savage told StateScoop. 

Along with addressing these foundational issues, the new strategy and team fulfill orders included in the state’s Procurement Reform Act of 2025 and Gov. Wes Moore’s procurement reform agenda. She said both the legislature and the governor were trying to address issues with Maryland’s existing procurement process, which can lead to both unnecessary spending and missed opportunities to leverage technology the state already owns. 

The state’s fiscal 2026 discovery work identified more than 1,700 technology requests representing over $500 million in estimated demand. And, an analysis indicated that only about 3% of the combinations of IT buy type and procurement vehicle have a template designed for that purchase, with individual Requests for Proposals (RFPs) stretching up to 118 pages across stitched-together legacy documents.

“A vendor will say this is a $40 million project, and there’s not historically been a way to validate what you’re actually trying to solve, and you might actually be able to solve it with something much cheaper and something potentially that we even have already in our technology stack,” Savage said. “So by having all requests, whether it’s very small, a single laptop, or like an [electronic health record] EHR system, come through one front door, we can evaluate what the need is, and start with the problem versus like the budget.” 

Savage acknowledged that while agencies may view the new process as an additional administrative burden, upfront discovery can prevent lengthy, unsuccessful procurement efforts. 

Rather than spending years developing extensive RFP requirements only to discover a solution doesn’t meet an agency’s needs, she said DoIT wants agencies to adopt a more iterative approach: building, testing and refining technology in smaller stages. She also emphasized a shift toward treating software as an ongoing product rather than a one-time vendor-delivered project, with agencies employing their own product managers, engineers and designers to develop, maintain and evolve technology over time.

The goal, she said, is to encourage agencies to focus on the problems they need to solve, reduce duplicative software purchases and promote greater use of existing statewide technology solutions. 

Maryland is also exploring the use of artificial intelligence to further streamline the acquisition process through a planned partnership with Partners for Public Good, Savage added. Any AI tools developed for procurement will be required to comply with the state’s Responsible AI Policy, and the new process is currently undergoing end-to-end user testing across seven state agencies, while DoIT continues recruiting for the permanent technical acquisition team. 

Savage said that she’s excited that this initiative and the new team will be helmed by DoIT’s chief operating officer, Melissa Leaman, which makes the change “embedded in our operations,” she said. 

“We’ve brought the ethos of good technology development and made it something that other teams, not just our digital service team, are going to implement. Which tells me we’re onto something — we’re on to like a new operating system for the state,” she said. “It’s not just you know our digital service team that is developing in this way, but there’s so much buy-in for this new operating model that our COO is running this. So I’m really excited about that because that tells me that we’re onto something in terms of wholesale systemic change in the state.”