Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Alright. Welcome everybody to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure and Senate Institutions. We're doing a joint hearing today. So we'll quickly go around the room and introduce ourselves, and then we'll turn it over to our witnesses. So I'm representative Kathleen James from the Bennington 4 District.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Scott Campbell from Saint

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: John Perry. Richard Bailey, Lamoille too. Chris Morrow, Windham Windsor, Bennington. Michael Southworth, Caledonia two. Christopher Howland, Rutland four.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Dara Torre, Washington two.

[Rep. Bram Kleppner]: Bram Kleppner, Chittenden 13, Burlington. Laura Sibilia, Windham two.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Wendy Harrison, chair of institutions and senator for the Windham District.

[Sen. Joe Major]: Joe Major, senator for Windsor.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: John Benson, senator for Orange District. Super. And I'm Rob Plunkett, senator of Managing District, vice chair of institutions and chair

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: of Jack Topwood.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Great. And in the room,

[Lisa Gobin (IT Consultant, JFO)]: Lisa Gobin, IT Consultant with JFW. Super.

[Sen. Joe Major]: Dana Lee Barry, the Grassley.

[Cole Barney (Department of Buildings and General Services)]: Cole Barney with the Department of Building and General Services.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Great. Alrighty. For the record.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Rick Sagal, office of legislative council. Thanks for having me back, after last session. Getting back in house. I didn't mean that at the back

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: of the meeting.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I did not. Oh, is this chair feels smaller? So I'm like, alright.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: We Feel like you have

[Sen. Joe Major]: a rolling chair.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Yes. Yes.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Feel much smaller here.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Maybe it's in a guy from the facility. I

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: also want the chair to know I had a ledge IT rolling table right here that was removed from this from this room. I don't know.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Oh. I

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: think my

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: colleague is standing desk.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's like one of those convertible. It goes up and down.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: I'm sorry. I know a little bit about that. Remember it is.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. I'm on the record, I just want, you know, the three of us would like even like right over here to be able to set up our laptop.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Great. I'll say on record, what is that? Get it out of my committee room and we rolled across the hallway.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: That's fine.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's your room. It's your room, honey chair.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Now we know what it is. We'll get it back for you.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Yeah.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, you didn't know what it was? Okay.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: It's supporting the great microwave chiming.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, okay. Well, that seems pretty important

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: too. Yeah.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alright. Again, Rick Segal, opposite of legislative Council, and the chair asked me to come today to talk about JITOC, the Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee. I did talk about this last year, if you all remember, my lovely testimony. It was one of the first weeks of session. But just to refresh our minds, I do wanna pull up the statutory charge of JITOC in case there's some forgetfulness about what they do or or what the purpose of it is. So just kind of quickly here, we are entitled to section six fourteen. JITalk is created and, to, oversee investments in and use of IT in Vermont and to provide periodic advice on legislative IT issues. So I'm first gonna talk about the committee and then actually go into what the committee did over the summer and fall, if that's okay. So there's six members on the committee, three in the House, three in the Senate. The duties are pretty broad of Chittenden. They oversee, evaluate, and make recommendations on the state's current deployment, management, oversight of IT, and the furtherance of state government activities, includes data processing, telecommunication networks, and that's right already quite broad. That includes broadband. That includes all kinds of IT systems in the state. Issues related to the storage of, maintenance of, access to, privacy of, and restrictions on use of computerized records. Issues of public policy related to the development and promotion of the private commercial and nonprofit information infrastructure in the state, its relationship to the state government information infrastructure and its integrations with national and international information networks, and finally, cybersecurity. Again, a very, very broad category there. The committee may provide advice to the director of legislative IT and the joint legislative management committee as appropriate.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: They have

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the assistance of my office, Ledge Operations and the Joint Fiscal Office. The meetings, are first, we select a chair and a vice chair, that serves for a biennium, and I'll talk about that in a second. They do rotate. The chairs rotate between the house and the senate each biennium. The committee may meet when the general assembly is not in session or to call the chair. So, really, they can meet any time. Right? As long as the chair calls them into session. And their typical reimbursement language there. So what is the purpose of JITALK? It is overseeing state IT all the time in some assets, but also when you are not here. Right? Because when you are here, you're a standing committee that is one of your committee assignments is state IT. Right? In the senate, you have senate institutions, one of their assignments is state IT. So as a standing committee, you can review legislation related to state IT. You can propose legislation like you did last year as a committee bill. Right? The act 48 or ADS. Cannot do that. JITALK can discuss issues. They can bring in witnesses. They can propose ideas, but they cannot actually vote on a bill. They cannot propose a bill. They can recommend something be done, but they actually cannot they don't have the authority to actually remove legislation throughout the general assembly. Okay. Can I move on to what did this fall?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Well, couple questions. And I'm sorry if I missed this. I thought that in the off session could approve previously allocated funds?

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So if the general assembly gives JITOC that specific authority, which it has in the past, but it's not really part of your committee charge.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Okay. So specific to if the legislature says like in the budget.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Yes.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Like, and this is coming up this summer and Jai Talk

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: A part

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: of people

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of Jai Talk. Yes.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Okay. Yeah. And then that was one question I had. And then the second was is Senator Plunkett going to tell us what we did over the summer or

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: is Rick going to do? Madam Chair, if I can come up

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and sit with Rick, I

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: think probably tag team it. Thanks. And for the record, again, it's Ralph Plunkett, then it's Tennant District here as the chair of JITalk. So rep James and rep Sibilia, obviously, are on JITalk as well. So we have half the committee here. So when I'm going through my presentation, I might try to phone a friend. So Lisa Gobin is here as well. So I can jump into my presentation list, Rick, you're if you have more than you have prepared. I I was

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: just gonna talk about the maybe that first meeting of John Talk. Because senator Plunkett was elected chair. Right? So what the first thing our committee did was we introduced the committee. I also went over the charge of Jai Talk with Jai Talk. So senator Plunkett was elected chair because it was Senna's turn to be chair. Representative Murray Priestley was elected vice chair. And then as senator Plunkett said, you have some other members here, chair James and Rutland, are also on Jai Talk, who attended the meetings. And I think maybe senator Pluckin could talk about some of the things that have that I also have kind of a summary of what JITalk did. Great. So maybe I'll let yeah.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Senator Pluckin start. And and I did prepare well, I prepared a couple of reports. First, I was looking at the reports of what we did, going deep into the details, which I realized this is probably not necessary for for the committee. So it pares down quite a bit. And I didn't know that Rick was gonna be here, so this entire first page, I'm gonna just skip over. But I do wanna point out a couple of different things that hadn't come up. First of all, in terms of the makeup of the Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee. So it's six members, three senate, three house appointed by the committee and committees in the senate and by the speaker of the house. There are no other requirements in terms of membership beyond each side cannot all be at the same political party. And I hope that the reason that's important is I'll get to it in a second because I'm hoping that a lot of this, instead of going into the into the weeds on different projects, I know you've started to do, might be a discussion of technology oversight in general. But I will tell you what we did over the over the, I'll call it, the break. So just another point on the charge. Can you bring up the the statutory language again? Because I I wanna just point out one other thing that I find interesting on the charge from the Joint Information Technology oversight committee. So so powers and duties, the committee shall oversee dot dot dot over So if you look at this part of the the the charge of Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee is actually overseeing oversight of technology. I mentioned this because the the statute is incredibly broad in terms of of what it is charged to do with technology, and it has given no authority to actually do anything with it except as Rick mentioned, specific tasks that the legislature would give, and we we did not have specific task for this past session. So I apologize for also not using a larger font. Yes. So so during the off session, we met five times, and I'm just commenting to to Rick that I can't believe it was only five times because it it felt like a lot more. We had we had all day sessions, and one of them was was way too long, I cut that back a little bit. And the members this year were obviously myself. Our vice chair was Noyne Priestley. Rep Sibilia, chair James are also on from the house. The senators were David Weeks and Randy Brock. So the six of us met. Most of the time, at least one or two of us were remote. There was one time when we did not know if we were gonna have a forum during the health session. We did ultimately have a forum, so we are able to go ahead and have that meeting. And, again, I mentioned this because of some of the points I'll I'll make later on. Also, at all the meetings were at all, but we can get attorney. Attorney Ray Royale was a royal was also there for a couple of the meetings. Lisa was there for every meeting, I believe. Mhmm. And Megan was there for everyone but one where senate had pulled her away from us. And this was obviously, I'm a first time legislator. This is my first time as being a chair. And those other folks being there helped me survive this this time period. And this might be the last time I get to to use the I'm new excuse for things, but I'm gonna I'm gonna use it because it was a fairly daunting task to look at this. So we've got this charge. How do we how do we approach it? And the agendas essentially came out month by month without an overall structure, which I hoped to do, because we do have five topics that we can we can look at. I was hoping to do each meeting as one topic. That was not viable. So our first meeting, honestly, was our organizational meeting where we were, elected, and then we went into pending projects with Lisa, which I believe you all did with her last week. Similar presentation that we we had from her to give us a overview of of the major projects that we should be looking at. Now we also heard from we heard an update on one of them from sector Hughes on on BT buys. That is the state's procurement program. And I'm hoping this will be a discussion to chair James if if you're okay with it. If you have questions, jump in. Tell me I don't have to go into the details. Also, me that. And at the time BT buys, there was an article about it having problems. It wasn't getting it wasn't function functioning the way we wanted. We had the secretary and commissioner in. We heard a little bit about that. I'm not gonna go into the details on that, but we did come back to that later on. We also heard from director Christine of the Vermont Community Broadband Board, and it was specifically about the broadband equity access deployment program awards, the program. So she gave us an update on broadband in general and awards as well. That was the only time we touched on telecommunications during the off session. Again, I point that out that we did touch on it, but there's not enough time, and our charge was was very broad. So we limited to mostly IT projects here. At the end of the meeting, we discussed different priorities that the members of the committee had. And the the list was fairly fairly broad. Data privacy, review of IT systems for all three three branches, cybersecurity, state ID I AI procurement, data governance. I'm I'm kind of paraphrasing that. But, again, it was a broad thing, and we didn't touch on all those those topics during the limited time that we had. So we had five meetings, which is essentially, you know, a week of your the house committee in one other day. So that was August 26. We met also in September. During that, we had we invited senate appropriations chair, senate institutions chair. So chair Harrison was there, chair of this committee, chair James, who obviously was gonna be there anyway, and also rep Jim Harrison, who's house of perforations. He's focused on on IT. And the discussion there was, what is your view of the role of JITOC now that we have two committees of jurisdiction that deal with, some just call it IT or technology. It could be a lot of different, definitions of that. That discussion, was relatively, I guess, and fruitful different ideas on on what the tech committees had. I think one of the things that was mentioned then, that was mentioned again, was the importance of IT in general for state government and the idea that beyond just committees of jurisdiction, that there should be committees of jurisdiction exclusively to IT. And I should also I meant to preface this at the beginning. We as a committee can make recommendations. We did not. We did not come to a vote on recommendations. So my report is simply the report of the of the chair, and these are my ideas, not ideas that are necessarily voted on by the the committee because we didn't take that kind of vote. I can say, I think, for the committee is that everyone recognizes the the, essential importance of technology for state government and the need for, robust and frequent oversight, of the project. Well, so did I suggest the question, did you affirmative affirmatively take a vote or take have the consensus opinion not to make recommendations, or did she just not get around to that? In the end, I I don't recall the conversation, but I think we we did have the consensus that we didn't have any recommendations that we, as a committee, would go forward because I think and I think part of that was our last meeting. And then when our our last meeting, if anyone was there, think we only had four members. So would have been at the last last meeting. And I I would not wanna take a vote just more of six members on something important. It's just

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: it it just seems like the the idea of having a a a standing committee dedicated to IT, digital infrastructure. That's an important concept.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: And and, Rutland, you're absolutely right. And I'm gonna pull the I'm new card. But I can go back and and and seriously about this. Going back as a first time chair, I'm gonna look at this very differently. Yeah. Working towards a specific goal with a particular a specific recommendation. And but what we did find out is that there are robust areas where where this could happen Yeah. As as you all know. You know, it's at ERP in October. So let me see my notes. So September, we came back. We had that discussion on the role of JITOC now, and we heard about the IT modernization special fund, which I think you all know is is now fully obligated in IT funding. It there's not a specific model that funds IT. We heard about the unemployment insurance modernization project. We heard about more problems that BT buys was experiencing. We had had the secretary and the commissioner back in again. We've been after the the first meeting article, we had we heard from folks essentially that vendors were not being paid and was going for a long period of time. So we had them come in and explain that. And I'm not gonna go into details on that, but there was some some explanation from that. We heard updates from judiciary and legislative IT as well on at that meeting. We heard from the AI and cybersecurity councils. And one thing I'll comment on regarding the judiciary IT update, one of these we all may know this, but judiciary has their own separate network separate from the executive branch. And I had asked, you know, why is this? The answer was essentially reliability of the executive branch network. Judiciary wanted a network that was up in a more reliable Yeah. Way, which I think most of us found fairly interesting. I'll put it that way. So October, met again, and that's when we, heard first about the enterprise, resource planning project. We assume everyone here knows, what that is, but it's replacing the expenses, budgeting, payroll. So it it it covers all of state government. It'll cover all of the executive branch, also the legislative and just sharing. It's it Workday was the the product that was selected. Guidehouse is the vendor that's implementing it. It's the same product, at least, that's used in Rhode Island. We just heard a little bit about the problems Rhode Island's having with their with their implementation. We also heard from attorney on the history of Vermont IT oversight, which was was also telling had had its ups and downs, and it's only since that was in '18 that JITOC has existed. And I can say that this past round was the most that had met during the off session of of any of the sessions that's, existed. November meeting, we looked at draft, rules of procedure for the committee, which was actually my one, goal to to do for the obsession was to follow statute and and adopt rules that we we needed. Didn't do that. And part of the reason for that was it included an executive session portion, which we talked about. It became clear later on that that was gonna be a very controversial aspect of it. And we simply did not have time to discuss all of the ins and outs of what that could mean. I'll talk a little bit more about that later on. Oh, okay.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: I I was hoping you

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: would say that again because I I missed the first part of that. But And Executive sessions What was the topic of that that you were talking about? Oh, it was the rules of procedure for for JITA. For JITA. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It would have included an executive session Okay. Portion. Thank you. So we heard about the integrated eligibility project, the child welfare IT projects. All all of these projects are are so incredibly important that it's it's impossible to really overemphasize something like the child welfare system, the CCWIS system, which, you know, now functions on Excel sheets. So that has to be modernized, that's it's absolutely crucial to to where we're going. I'm missing something here. When did

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: we have the executive session?

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you know? It was I believe it was It was in October.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: It was in October?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Yeah. Also, that was the meeting.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: I did. So in October, we also had an executive session to talk about cybersecurity issues. And from that is part of what realized were, you know, some issues with executive session that I'll talk a little bit about later. So it was on November at the November, we did hear about from the National Guard about their their cyber capabilities. And attorney Segal also gave us a primer on data breach obligations that we have in statute. So when there's a data breach in general in Vermont, which includes state government, what are the obligations of notification? And our last meeting was in December. We heard from, the agency of digital services, went over their strategic direction. We heard from, Josiah Reich as well. He's the chief data and artificial intelligence officer. We've heard from him about data governance, which is essentially, you know, how does an entity, the state Okay. Govern, how they use their own data. And we heard from him specifically about a data lake warehouse model. And I'm not gonna try to go into the details on that, but it's it's something that, ADS is I think they're working on and building, and it's something that, legislative oversight is well merited. There is a report, and I I don't remember who the report is to, that came out on, the fifteenth regarding this. It talks a little bit about it.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Alright. Yeah. Go ahead.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So it's a house commerce report and a senate economic development report. So I can send that if you all wanna see it. It's online.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Oh, I'm not. I'm so sorry.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Does is your

[Sen. Joe Major]: purview also evaluating the implementation of IT? Such as, I know, Department of Motor Vehicles just recently had their, information technology revamped. Do you go and, do an AAR, after actual review on that? What went right, what went wrong, how we can how we can do it better?

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Now the the two questions there. One, is it in our purview? Yes. If it has to do anything with technology, is is supposed to deal with it. Whether we can is a different story, because it's it's a limited off session committee. And even with these these many, meetings that we had, it's the scope is so limited. It would then turn into a Yeah. Essentially a committee jurisdiction. So would enough. So would able to do that.

[Sen. Joe Major]: You do a recommendation of having an evaluation of how the implementation went?

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: And Lisa can we can speak more to that, but I believe that is what she is doing for JFO, and she has presented those to us in the past. And she did over Jai Talk, and I assume she will with with institutions this year. Okay. She was here last week for the house. I was a year ago. So what else did we talk about in December? Crossroads. Yeah. And we had in sector of ADS, the head of IT for a judiciary and the legislature to have a conversation that became a very frank conversation about cross branch communication regarding IT issues. And what was very clear to members of the committee is that it was I forget the word that Rutland used.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Not going well.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Well, it was it was the word was more stringent than that, but it was not going well. But we had that discussion, and in the end, the three branches did agree to get together and talk about a memorandum of understanding and communication regarding these. We expect to see that in February because that's what we were we were promised. So you, senator, just expand that a little bit more on the Vermont revised program, and has that issue been resolved?

[Sen. Joe Major]: Do you know how to

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: And I don't know at this point. I know that we had the update from the first meeting, and I believe it the second meeting we had another update. And that's why I'm a little loath to go into partially, I'm not the one to go into the details. When I was going over this, my my lawyer brain went up, and I'm like, this is all hearsay. I shouldn't be be saying this. But I'm I'm also not the the subject matter expert on that, but the updates also are different each time. So I don't know this the current status of that. I can say that at least from my standpoint, I have not heard of ongoing problems, but that doesn't you know, the absence of that is certainly not that that is a you. And also December, we also looked again, at the ERP project, which is the most important, most expensive project that, we have going on right now, which, should be looked at more and more. We when we had the secretary in again for the ERP project, she did say, we are here just a month ago. It was a little bit more than a month ago. We don't have updates. But when she did go over it, there were some some updates that we heard. So, I think there's, I don't wanna call it resistance, but I think there's an expectation that there won't be repeated. I guess Glant is under the hood, which which is what we had we had hoped to do more with with Jai Talk. We did as much as

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: we could to put five minutes on that.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: So and we rounded off the last, meeting with discussions of next steps, which part part of the reason why I'm here. And I know from that discussion, Rutland was, who introduced two bills on legislative, perhaps judiciary representation on the AI Council and on the Cybersecurity Council. I'm not sure if she had submitted those, but that was something that came from Repsibilia. So the closest came to a recommendation, but we didn't have a vote on on that. So some of my takeaways from being a chair of this giant committee and with the incredible help of Lisa Galvin, rep Priestley, we it was clear that there's an obvious need for the legislature to keep on top of not just the major IT projects, but IT projects overall in general. One of the things that that didn't come out in committee, but we reached out to, to JFO to find out, oh, you know, what's the technology budget for the state? And there's no way to really assess that, but at least in last year's ADS reporting, it was something like $700,000,000. So a significant portion of of the the state's budget even roughly can be assigned as as IT. And so okay. And in terms of challenges for for oversight in general, other than just the time, is that there's a reticence to to say things. And it might be that we're in the procurement stage, so we can't talk about these reports. You know, your JFO consultant has an MOU, you can see those, and that's the extent of it. But, also, when we might want to go into those sensitive topics, entering into executive session, there is not really a clear mechanism on making sure that the confidentiality of those sessions are maintained. And as a chair, I I found that a bit unnerving that we were asking sensitive questions. We were getting sensitive information, and I did not have any real guarantee that nothing was going to be, we use the word, leaked out of that. So I was hesitant to go into a further executive session, after the first week, because we don't have a way of any any sort of, I guess, sanction, I would say, if something is said that's sensitive. And quite frankly, this can be specifically about cybersecurity issues, and that being leaked out could then become, an actual problem. There are also, concerns that, we had heard specifically from from ADS about that, which might be a little bit different from just project safety. But it's something that has to be discussed so that we as a legislature can get all of this information, and process it as we need and make sure that whoever's sitting there is comfortable telling us what the what the problems are, what their complaints are, so that there's no, I don't wanna say retaliation, but there's no fear of of retaliation in any way. Can I interrupt for something? Yeah. So, senator Plunkett,

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: I think you mentioned earlier that you talked about establishing rules, but decided that you couldn't you couldn't establish formal rules. Is that did I understand that correctly? Or

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Well, I I ultimately didn't bring the rules to a vote because after they were proposed, we then heard more about the issues on executive session. Believe I had a recommendation from ADS on what those rules should look like, which it didn't, I knew there wouldn't be time to to properly vet all of those. Senator Brock had had had raised an issue with with that specific part of part of the role. And quite frankly, has been functioning well enough without the rules for so long that my my one goal was okay knowing that this topic is going to come up, and it's not exclusive to that committee. It it goes broader over every committee. I I have experienced other joint committees that that don't have Others. Every committee. Every the legislature. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, there there are no rules in the house that I understand. The senate rules do have executive session rules, but it's not specific as to, this is absolutely confidential, etcetera, etcetera.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: So and the fact that you talked about adopting rules, but didn't have time enough time to really delve into it and and set them and vote on them.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Is that Yeah. That that was yeah. Yeah. That was my opinion. So I did I didn't bring it back up. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. So and just my my final thoughts, which are which are fairly big. Actually, it looks like they go on for a couple of pages, but I won't I won't bore you with going through all of that because when I was first appointed to JITOC knowing that there were now two committees of jurisdiction that essentially covered the the area, my my first question was, is this even necessary? Why does it exist, and what, what role will it play? We tried to to work that out over the obsession. And I I've I was on a couple of obsession committees. Another one was joint justice. And I I saw a distinct, difference between the makeup of joint justice, and, the technology oversight committee. And I believe the the transportation oversight committee is is similar. Joint justice is is clearly made up of the chairs of the committees of jurisdictions. So in judiciary for both both chambers, the health committees for for both chambers, corrections committees for both chambers, appropriations for both chambers are are on joint justice, and there are, I think, two older members that are on as well. So that's a panel of 10 people, that get together. And what I can say happened was carried on the agenda, from the the session. It continued during the off session to get updates as they can to prepare them for for the next session. The makeup of Jai Talk is is not like that. It just so happened that, we had the vice chair of institutions, the chair of of this committee, and clerk of this committee on our on our committee. But it was much more narrow focused, and it wasn't specifically to we're gonna follow along the, the issues that had been considered before. So in terms of what JITALK could or should look like, and and quite frankly, this these questions that I'm having might just be because I was the chair and the chair should have been better at organizing this. But another way that I looked at oversight in general, when I saw this was, okay, this is gonna be like those congressional oversight committees where you haul in corporate CEOs, you haul in the administration, you grill them. And, you know, that, from what I can tell, is not something that this legislature has done. It would require, you know, subpoenas. It would require people testifying under oath. None of this this happens here. So these are just different ideas that I had in terms of what this committee that I was chairing could function as. And and the last one was, I think what has before is that we have this very broad bucket of areas that we can look at, but doesn't really need to do anything unless the legislature gives specific task to. And some of the other joint committees are like that. The LCAR has specific task to look at rules, go through it, and ji JITALK could also function as that. It would be up to the committees now jurisdiction to give direction to JITALK afterwards. And I'm mentioning all of this not so much that I have any recommendations for this, but these are things to think about, in terms of what that committee could look like, in the future, but also what our committees could look like. And I I'll I'll say flat out that I think that, and I haven't talked to for attempts specifically about this. So if you're listening, I'll I'll I'll chat with you later that technology, and you can define that in some some way, whether it's digital infrastructure, digital services, information technology. They should have specific, committees addressed just to that. Because I know I'm looking at your board, and I see all of these energy bills, and there's not a ton of technology. And I know from our experience in institutions dealing with two other, areas and then having another, is something that that, especially for our our first senate community, can be can be overwhelming. So that is more of me just talking than us discussing it than I had expected. So that is basically the rundown of what did during the session. Open and welcome other questions from from anyone here. Lisa might have any input on on this. I'd love to hear it. If you wanna tell me offline, that would be good too.

[Sen. Joe Major]: Don't have anything to say.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Rutland, etcetera?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Well, you mentioned you don't have specific recommendations, but I'm wondering if there's anything we can do. Let's see. Any jurisdiction here to facilitate the next off season of to lead to its success. And,

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: again, the committee itself doesn't have any any recommendations. As the chair, yes. I mean, this committee could say, hey. Jotak should be looking at this particular issue, in-depth, and that's why we can do that, rather than taking the universe and trying to to address it. So that that would be my one thing. But what I'm I'm hoping it'll be more of a conversation about what Jai Talk should be from, I don't know if it's leadership or it's the committees because it does seem like, a continuation of the session functions well for joint justice. And that's just my my only experience there. And, you know, folks might disagree with that, obviously. That's why I bring it up as a discussion topic about it. Think should happen.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: For Kleppner, then Campbell, then Sibilia, then me.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: So first of all, let me welcome senator Benson to the

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: legislature. Welcome. Welcome. Yeah.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Happy to be here. And

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: what are you most scared about? The ERP program. Yeah. Yeah. That is making sure that state workers get paid get paid on time and get paid what they're supposed to be paid amongst many, many other things. But that is the thing that is the most important to me right now amongst everything else that is the most important. Yeah. But that's that's what comes. Thank you. And we could we could pull up the Thank you. We're done. Dashboard on that. We wanna look at the, yeah, the red flags on air vent. Yeah. Well, that sounds like a

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: lot of spread flags potentially there. We've been I guess I'm worried about the the cost and the and the and the efficacy of how that thing rolled out. You're actually worried about how it functions and whether it functions, which is that's further dimensional. Well, it sounds like you're feeling with well, I guess, actually, let me ask you. Is it your feeling that that standing committee this committee, maybe institutions on the side ought to be structuring better with perhaps rules or or perhaps a a more well defined policy area?

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: I I I wanna just agree with Rep. Sibilia, but I think it's a little more nuanced than that. But my initial response is yes. I'm not sure if it's fair to put it on this committee. I'm not sure if it's fair to put it on institutions. It's because who had it. Right. Well, that's the that's the the other thing. And and, frankly, it it's better that we have the committees of jurisdiction at all. Yeah. But I I think this this problem is so big. These issues are so big that it has dedicated legislators for the entire year.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yep. Well, I I recall a recommendation by professor Sibilia, whenever it was, a year and a half ago, that energy and digital infrastructure, IT, whatever we call it, would be separate companies. Surprised. Appealed to me at the time. As well.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Matt can also respond. Yeah. I think it also might help you remember that Jai Tak can't really

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: do anything. Right? Right. We're getting at now.

[Rick Segal (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Like, so if you you say Jai Tak would want you to review the ERP project twice or whatever it is, or you give them these directives, keep in mind, they can't really do anything except have a hearing, right, and have the secretary there and have people there talking about what's working, what's not working. And it is up to the chair, vice chair to come back and tell you, here's what we want you to do. So just kind of remember that, that that you can change the statutory charge, dry talk. That's something else you all can do And this committee, any committee can do it, but you have the authority to amend what DITALK can and cannot do. Right now, they oversee things, but overseeing things is not really actionable,

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: if if that makes sense. What I wrote down is lots of responsibility and authority.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Right. And and it was mentioned earlier, there there had been so I talked had been tasked before releasing fund from the Yeah. Modernization Yeah. Project UI project and On an basis. On an annual basis.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: You. Sibilia?

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: I don't know how much more I have to add. I mean, I think we heard the chair talking about how broad the charges. And just historically speaking, I would say this committee came into being before all of our big broadband work before pandemic. It really was more focused on that. And there's a lot of discretion depending on who is the chair and where they wanna go and what they wanna look at. And IT, I think, remains and is growing. It's something that we really don't have enough attention focused on, data,

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: and all of that. And and bounce bounce off of that and and perhaps also address Rob Campbell's question that there is some value to simply having coming people come in and tell us about the project. Tell us again. Tell us again. So putting them in the spotlight, having something, because we did have we granted, I guess, during the off session, slow the newest. But there were actually two two articles that were written regarding something we had talked about. So that's value just having it talked about. But Yeah. I mentioned some of the some of the concerns with talking about sensitive issues.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Senator Harrison, do want me to

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Senate Institutions)]: I didn't wanna I I wanna be in the queue, but you were next. Okay.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: So I I don't know whether this is a good idea or not, but I it was what I tossed out at the end of our last JITalk meeting when we were all kind of talking about what should JITAAC do and what should it be. And I I also think that JITAAC JITAAC's charge is too broad. And, you know, by the time you convene over the summer and have five meetings that amounts to only one week of legislative work with a a preview that broad, I feel like there's very little you can actually accomplish. You can't dive in. And the the beauty of having a stand alone committee over the summer is that you could go a little bit deeper on this stuff. And I wonder if it might be worth committing or or considering, and I'd love to get folks feedback on this, about whether JITALK should be tasked only with, and this is in and of itself a pretty big deal, monitoring state IT projects over the summer and fall. I mean, it is $700,000,000. It is a number of complicated complex projects. I think there's tremendous value in having those folks report into us. You know, we're gonna have them all into house energy and digital structure or whatever this committee is. We'll have them all in here. Right? And you guys will have them in. To to be kind of monitoring those projects as the summer and fall goes on in a really in-depth way. And then I think John Joint Top should be required to to file recommendations, to issue an end of, you know, like this report in December that says we looked at, you know, we looked at CCWIS, we looked at ERP, we looked at, you know, this, here's what we think, you know, and here's what we think are legislative next steps to do in the next session. I think that'd be plenty to do. And I think it would be useful and it kind of meshes that and it would then be a handoff to our policy committees and would allow us to, you know, work with JFO, which is doing that work as well.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Yes. And after we've, discussed that, I thought about that a lot more. Obviously, can do that now. And the goal I can tell you, the goal unless something changes is for that to have the the specific projects that we're gonna be looking at, doing deep dives, and getting in people that are actually doing work, either working on the project or stakeholders of the project. Because because that's one of the things that's difficult with legislative oversight. So we have access to the executive branch, we don't necessarily have access to the the woman that's on SNAP with three children. So we did have legal aid come in once, and I didn't don't recall if that was don't recall which project that that was, but that was helpful to have the the connection between ADS and them and having a a further conversation on on that. Although, the problems with a lot of these projects are historical, more than specific specifically right now.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Yes, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. So a couple of comments that are similar to yours. Well first, thank you so much for doing this. It was a challenge obviously, but I do appreciate it and I think it's valuable. So our committee, this is just the first year that our committee has had jurisdiction of IT. So again, this is valuable. I appreciated the meeting where you invited some of the chairs. I particularly was interested in IT, how we procure IT. I think that process should be looked into and could be improved. So there's just so many aspects. I do think it's important to have JITOC, if we keep using JITOC, focus on one or two items. But I think you can do that. I have faith in- Oh yeah. I mean you could do that and give us recommendations. I think the structure is probably intentional so that the legislature has the authority because the legislature has the authority. And in joint judiciary we don't do very much. We don't take a lot of actions but we do gather information and it's super helpful to have all of those committees for the summer in the same place because that's something that we don't have and we don't have time to do that during the session. I'm particularly interested in the ERP. I'm glad you have more knowledge because we'll talk about that in our committee. I do wonder if we need more help, more professional assistance. I think that would help us a lot in the process both in and out of session. So that's something that I'd like to consider in our committee and your committee also if you're interested. But I think we need additional for support. Additional findings encourage for more support because that really important resource is limited very much and that is key to understanding what's happening. So thank you. Thank you.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. I would like to just support a notion that you put on the table and and actually making changes to Chitalk to narrow and even potentially to expand its ability to meet strictly on IT projects during the session to augment the work that's going on. I'd I'd encourage both the chairs to consider making that change possibly this year. That could be helpful. And and also hearing from Lisa Goddard who's really on the spot right now about changes that might help.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Yeah. We should should say flat out that that Lisa has been an incredible resource. Yeah. And saying that we need more of these resources is the answer. If we can we can phone Lisa, then we take some of the prudent off of her and have more voices. And Rutland, right now, we can meet we can meet during during the session. So maybe we should talk and see if we we wanna just wanna do that on our own, but but we can now, dry talk is not limited. It's just the office session.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: However, our purview is so massive. I know in the past, it's made other chairs nervous. You know, we're having competing

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: To compete with the the standing committees? Yeah. Fair enough.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Thanks, Senator Pluckett, and thanks for stepping up to be chair. It's interesting that I had never, you're new, but I've never been on a joint committee. And so my, whether whether it winds up being a good idea or not, my grand idea about, jeez, we should only do this, really kinda came in December.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: I mean, you you know, it's you don't know what you don't know until you don't know it.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Like, I think a lot to ask from from what we did.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: That's one too many. So alrighty. We feel the we probably need to take a break. We have 03:00. Do we have any burning questions?

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: Speaking about burning.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Is the room always this hot?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes. It is. You should have seen our first committee room. Yeah.

[Sen. Ralph Plunkett (Chair, JITOC; Vice Chair, Senate Institutions)]: May have heard about that.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Well, I

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair, House Energy and Digital Infrastructure)]: don't know. Alright.