Comptroller LAR Includes $35M in IT Exceptional Items

The Comptroller of Public Accounts’ fiscal year 2028-29 Legislative Appropriations Request (LAR) includes about $35 million in exceptional items with IT components, led by a data security and cost-containment request tied to cloud migration, mainframe modernization and security tools.

The agency is seeking about $25 million for IT data security and cost containment, about $9 million for IT contractual growth and uplift and about $821,000 for a fleet management system.

The largest item would fund several modernization and security efforts. The Comptroller says its core infrastructure is approaching critical risk levels and that mainframe-related workloads need to move to the cloud as on-premise hardware costs rise.

The request also includes funding for Zscaler Security Service Edge, mainframe analytics and data management modernization, Tableau reporting, Centralized Accounting and Payroll/Personnel System (CAPPS), website modernization and an enterprise governance, risk and compliance platform.

The Comptroller says the website is built on aging technology that will soon be unsupported. The agency says moving to a content management system platform would reduce risk, address compliance needs and align the site with statewide digital standards.

The enterprise governance, risk and compliance platform would replace manual, spreadsheet-driven IT and vendor risk management processes. The Comptroller says the platform would provide real-time visibility into the agency’s security posture and help ensure vendors protect taxpayer data.

A separate IT contractual growth and uplift item totals about $9 million. The request is driven largely by software license increases, though the item also includes projected growth in postage and warrant stock paper costs.

The fleet management system item totals about $821,000 and would replace the statewide vehicle fleet management system. The Comptroller says the current vendor will not support the system beyond December 2027, and the system supports reporting for more than 35,000 vehicles across 99 state agencies and higher education institutions.

The LAR also includes about $289 million in baseline capital projects across the biennium. That includes about $195 million for acquisition of information resource technologies, about $73 million for CAPPS, about $19 million for State of Texas Accounting and Reporting Resource (STARR) legacy modernization and about $2 million for data center and shared technology services.

The acquisition of information resource technologies category includes daily operations, call center modernization and capital funding for other operating technology needs. The Centralized Accounting and Payroll/Personnel System funding supports ProjectONE/CAPPS, while the legacy modernization item supports STARR.