Profiles in Government: A Closer Look at the Florida Digital Service

Established in 2020, the Florida Digital Service (FLDS) is the state's central IT agency and includes the state CIO, as well as the chief data officer and chief information security officer. Sitting within the Department of Management Services, it aims to streamline the delivery of government services to residents through technology.

Here is more information about the agency, including how many staff the department employs and what the department does as a whole.

FAST FACTS

Budget: According to SB 2500, the General Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2023-2024, the agency’s overall budget is $87,249,193.

Leadership: The state CIO oversees the agency. However, the role has been vacant since July 1.

Staff: The agency has a total of 70 employees.

MORE ABOUT THE AGENCY

According to the agency’s website, the process of developing FLDS started in 2019 after Gov. Ron DeSantis directed the state’s Health and Human Services agencies to redesign aging technology systems to better serve Floridians.

Based on that initiative, “the administration partnered with the Florida Legislature to create the Florida Digital Service to leverage data and deploy technology to better serve Floridians in 2020.” It is the successor agency to the Agency for State Technology, except for telecommunications functions spun out into a separate DMS division.

Now, FLDS oversees the state’s data interoperability, cloud-ready architecture, digital transformation efforts and cybersecurity, including the Cybersecurity Security Operations Center, which monitors the digital assets of partnering entities and identifies and mitigates threats.

The Legislature allocated the following for FLDS in Fiscal Year 2023-2024:

• $40 million for local government cybersecurity grants
• $35 million for enterprise cybersecurity resiliency
• $1.2 million for contracted services
• $7,102 for the lease and purchase of equipment
• $5,804 for risk management insurance

The budget bill also specified that FLDS has an oversight role for the following projects:

• The Planning, Accounting and Ledger Management (PALM) project at the Department of Financial Services
• The Florida Healthcare Connections (FX) project at the Agency for Health Care Administration
• The Florida Turnpike Enterprise's Commercial Back Office projects within the Department of Transportation
• The Motorist Modernization project at the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles
• The Reemployment Assistance Modernization and Consumer-First Workforce Information System projects at the Department of Economic Opportunity

More information about the agency and its work can be found online.