State CIO outlines phased IT integration plan, inventories ~678 IT staff across agencies

Kevin Gilbertson, Montana’s chief information officer, told the Legislative Finance Committee that an executive order launched an integration effort to better coordinate executive-branch IT and seek administrative efficiencies while avoiding service disruptions.

Gilbertson said staff cataloged agency IT capabilities, identified roughly 678 staff across targeted agencies and mapped 59 IT capability domains. The integration intends to create an Integration Management Office and an operating structure with three customer‑facing lines (agency experience/customer success, a chief product officer responsible for prioritization and road‑mapping, and a chief technology/enterprise delivery function for infrastructure and device management) plus an expanded security and enterprise administration team.

"We're not looking for people to just sit next to each other," Gilbertson said. "We're really looking for an integrated IT process that will let us make more data‑driven decisions about projects and reduce duplicative costs." He stressed the state is not asking for new FTEs to staff the change; the initial work will be done with existing staff and by gradually migrating functions where there are clear economies of scale.

The CIO also described procurement and funding adjustments under consideration: moving away from a model that obligates the state to large vendor line items when individual agencies cancel, and toward enterprise‑rate allocations and more granular time‑tracking (half‑hour increments) to better allocate staff time to projects and funding sources. He identified device management and cell‑phone contracts as near‑term opportunities for savings.

Committee members asked about head counts and the timeline for the next steps; Gilbertson said further execution will begin in the following month and LFD and the budget office will work with him on funding methodology. No formal action was requested at the meeting.