Fiscal Notes: The Cost of Aging Government Technology

Texas agencies have a lot of IT assets that are aging says Hegar Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas  In the latest issue of Fiscal Notes released today the Comptrollers office examines Texas state governments aging information technology (IT) infrastructure and the challenges it faces in serving a population growing by nearly half a million residents a year. The state spends more than $300 million annually on maintaining legacy systems hardware and software so old they are no longer supported by their makers according to a Texas Department of Information Resources estimate.

Texas agencies have a lot of IT assets that are aging some of them running on archaic programming language dating back to the 1950s Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar said. Each year the state spends hundreds of millions of dollars on maintaining these outdated systems and updating or replacing them would cost even more.

The December-January issue of Fiscal Notes also examines a major new IT-related project spearheaded by the Comptrollers office the Centralized Accounting and Payroll/Personnel System or CAPPS. This project will replace the states main automated business applications for financial reporting and human resources. Fiscal Notes is available online and also can be received by subscribing via the Comptrollers website. Fiscal Notes helps promote and further explain the Comptrollers constitutional responsibility to monitor the states economy and estimate state government revenues. It has been published since 1975 featuring in-depth analysis concerning state finances and original research by subject-matter experts in the Comptrollers office.