A new report out this week from the City Auditor shows the City of Austin spends significantly more money on IT staff than most cities of similar size, and employees far more IT staff than those other cities do as well.
“Austin spends more than peer cities,” said Kerrica Laake, Chief Information Officer for the City of Austin. “The initial estimate is 81% more, about $210 million a year. Only 30% of our IT staff is centralized, compared to 81% in peer cities. And we have 98% more staff.”
City Manager TC Broadnax is reportedly considering a staff reduction of around 50% — something the Austin employee union is not in favor of.
Recently, the city council voted in favor of a resolution giving the union significantly more input on things like staff layoffs, and this case could be the first real test of that change if Broadnax moves forward with the staffing cuts.
The report comes amid a separate audit that found major issues with the way the city hires and contracts with consultants. Among the findings of that report, staff did not conduct or document a needs assessment before hiring a consultant in almost 40% of contracts. As such, the city may not be able to show why the consultant was necessary, or worth the expense.
Also, for about 82% of the contracts, the hiring department did not appear to assess or document their in-house capabilities to determine whether the same work could be done by city staff instead of by consultants.
During fiscal years 2023 to 2025, the City of Austin spent over $279 million on services provided by consultants, and annual expenditures on consultants increased by $21 million, or 25%.
