The latest public update came March 4 at the Austin City Council’s Audit and Finance Committee, where Chief Information Officer Kerrica Laake briefed members on the city’s IT cost optimization work. The initiative traces back to a broader efficiency push outlined by City Manager T.C. Broadnax in a Nov. 5, 2025, memo, which said Austin had nearly twice the number of IT staff and double the technology spending of comparable cities and had begun consolidating departmental IT staff into ATS.
Committee backup materials offered a clearer picture of how city staff are framing the case for consolidation. According to the presentation, Gartner was engaged in June 2025 to benchmark staffing and spending and to help shape a new operating model. The materials said Austin’s IT spending was 81 percent higher than peer cities, with an initial estimate of about $201 million, that only 30 percent of IT spending was centralized compared with 81 percent in peer cities and that the city had 98 percent more IT staff than those peers.
City officials said the decentralized model has led to duplicate functions, redundant systems, inconsistent standards and uneven IT maturity across departments.
The city is now working through a two-part implementation schedule. Phase 1, described as the transition stage, runs from December through March for information gathering and director meetings, followed by team alignment recommendations in April and employee transition notification and onboarding in May.
Phase 2 is described as a two- to three-year transformation of city IT operations. The city also said operational technology roles in enterprise departments such as utilities and aviation are on a separate track with a longer implementation timeline.
The staffing consolidation is paired with a separate citywide application rationalization effort that could also reshape Austin’s technology footprint. Materials presented to the committee said the city cataloged 1,184 unique applications and 2,009 total application instances across departments, identified 24 consolidation opportunities affecting more than 300 applications and calls for cost-savings modeling in March followed by final reporting in April.
Resistance to the staffing plan has become more visible in recent days. Community Impact reported March 5 that city employees rallied against the initiative and that AFSCME Local 1624 delivered an open letter calling on the city to halt the “One ATS” plan, citing concerns about service response times and potential operational risks.
During the March 4 committee meeting, Councilmember Vanessa Fuentes said councilmembers had received a letter from the union raising significant concerns about the consolidation process. In response, city staff said employee reaction was mixed and said the city would need to incorporate the council’s newly adopted Consultation Policy with AFSCME Local 1624.
The discussion also showed that some of the headline figures may still shift. During the meeting, Laake said the Gartner analysis was directionally correct, but she also said the percentages and dollar figures could change as departments work with the city to separate operational technology costs from the broader IT benchmark. The city’s presentation makes the same point, noting that Phase 2 work is underway to refine the spending benchmark and remove operational technology costs in line with the methodology.
The debate comes as ATS already occupies a larger role in the city’s budget structure. In the city’s Fiscal Year 2025-26 budget, ATS was allocated $166 million, including $12 million transferred from the former Information Security Department.
This story originally appeared in Industry Insider — Texas, which is part of e.Republic, Government Technology’s parent company.
