Travis County Recommends $91M Tech Budget

Travis County’s preliminary Fiscal Year 2027 budget recommends $91.1 million for its Technology and Operations Department, including funding for software agreements, infrastructure replacements and justice and health system projects.

The recommendation is $322,000, or 0.4 percent, less than the department’s FY 2026 adopted budget. Personnel and operating appropriations would increase by $2.9 million to $85.8 million, while capital funding would decline by $3.2 million to $5.3 million. The department would have 292.5 full-time equivalent positions, two more than in the current budget.

One of the largest operating increases is $2.1 million in ongoing funding for hardware maintenance, software maintenance and software-as-a-service renewals. The county manages 174 agreements covering systems used by elected officials and county departments. Identified increases include $823,000 for Axon body-worn camera services, $611,000 for Enterprise Justice, $460,000 for Dell Isilon storage and $195,000 for Infoblox subscriptions.

The recommendations also include $5.3 million for technology equipment. The Planning and Budget Office recommends $4.5 million to replace hardware that has reached the end of its useful life and $775,000 for storage, computing resources, batteries, network equipment and licenses needed to accommodate growth.

A separate centralized computer budget recommends $2.2 million to replace 884 computers across county offices and departments. The planned refresh includes 558 notebook workstations, 168 standard personal computers, 56 high-end personal computers and 35 mobile data computers.

The county would continue work on electronic health records systems for the Sheriff’s Office and the employee health clinic. The recommendation totals $4.7 million, consisting of $1.6 million to continue existing contractors and a $3.2 million capital reserve earmark. The project is scheduled to proceed through a request for proposals, vendor selection and the beginning of implementation during FY 2027.

The Planning and Budget Office also recommends maintaining a $6.6 million Integrated Justice System reserve for continued implementation of the Sheriff’s Office records management and jail management systems. The systems would replace an application implemented in 1999 and are intended to reduce duplicate data entry, improve integrations and support newer technology and regulatory requirements. Accessing the reserve would require further action by the Commissioners Court.

Another $605,000 in one-time funding would continue three contractors working on the second phase of a digital magistration case management system. The project would replace a paper-based process used by Central Booking, Pretrial Services, judges, court clerks, prosecutors, defense attorneys and county and district clerks. The county anticipates that the TechShare.Magistration system will go live in December 2026.

The proposal includes $350,000 in one-time funding for software licenses and professional services to establish countywide role-based access controls. The project would standardize permissions based on job functions and include system assessments, role design, software configuration, integration, governance and training.

The recommendations would also reduce ongoing Technology and Operations costs by $744,000. That includes $544,000 for Micro Focus software after the county moves authentication and password-synchronization functions into its existing Microsoft environment, as well as $200,000 from the centralized account for unified communications expenses.