Maryland ‘looking at everything’ after governor’s modernization and efficiency order

After Maryland Gov. Wes Moore last January ordered a statewide modernization effort, Chief Information Officer Katie Savage said the state technology bureau is “looking at everything” to identify ways to increase efficiency.

The order, one of several Moore signed at the beginning of the year to improve IT, directed all state agencies to work with the Governor’s Office of Performance Improvement. Savage said part of the effort has included her Department of Information Technology studying its procurement processes, for items like computer hardware and mobile devices.

“We’re also looking at where there are duplicative contracts across different agencies, where either multiple agencies are buying from the same vendor, and we could be on one contract, or where we’re buying similar services that we could kind of consolidate to one platform,” Savage said. “So we’re looking at all of those things and trying to come up with recommendations for cost savings across the state.”

As an extension of the modernization order, Savage said, the state’s new Digital Infrastructure Group, which Moore also created last January, was tasked with unifying broadband deployment efforts across more than a dozen state agencies. It allows the agencies to plan out and coordinate their internet connectivity plans, including planning for repairs and expansions to networkMaryland, a statewide fiber backbone operated by the technology department that supports the state’s intranet and can lease capacity to private internet service providers.

“We’re making good progress,” Savage said. “We’re also working closely with DoIT’s in-house data team. We have a really strong … geographic information systems team that’s helping us map where all those assets are and create a single view for everyone in the state to be able to utilize.”