Oklahoma's state-supplied information technology services were the subject of a Monday interim study by state senators.
The head of Oklahoma’s prison system is unhappy with ongoing consolidation of the state’s IT services. Department of Corrections Director Joe Albaugh told lawmakers the state’s Office of Management and Enterprise Services can’t do everything they need.
"It affects our efficiency. It affects our ability to protect and maintain public safety," Albaugh said. "Since we have so many vacancies that DOC used to control in IT — now OMES does — we have to contract sometimes with third-party vendors to complete work, and that just adds cost."
State Chief Information Officer Bo Reese compared the situation to Walmart’s hundreds of U.S. stores.
"They don't have unique IT in every single one. They don't each run their own financial systems, their own inventory tracking. They run a single system for the efficiency," Reese said. "And so, the state has identified that we have a need to run the executive branch of state government as an enterprise."
Matt Singleton with OMES pointed out prison officials voiced their concerns to lawmakers at Monday's hearing, then left before anyone from OMES spoke.
"This is the systemic problem that we have," Singleton said. "Typically, we hear what their complaints are, we try to address them, there's no longer an audience there."
Reese said IT consolidation under OMES has been largely successful.
