New York state's proposed fiscal year 2026 budget would add hundreds of new staff members for its Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) workforce to bolster its cyber team.
The state has been working in recent years to enhance its cybersecurity efforts, releasing its first-ever cyber strategy in 2023. Leaders have also been working to advance its artificial intelligence posture, with Gov. Kathy Hochul last year announcing the Empire AI consortium.
The FY 2026 budget has a significant technology focus, including free tuition for tech degrees -- and proposes hiring nearly 300 ITS staffers to drive efficiency by bringing work in-house.
"This governor has been probably one of the most forward-looking, in terms of, she really understands what digital technology can do for you, including the cybersecurity," state Chief Information Officer Dru Rai, who also serves as ITS director, said.
The provisions in the governor's executive budget still need to be approved by the state Legislature before the budget is enacted, ITS Chief Communications Officer Scott Reif said via email. The state budget, negotiated between the governor and both houses of the state Legislature, must be approved by lawmakers and enacted by April 1, the start of the new fiscal year.
This year's document includes three primary areas for technology investment, according to Rai: cybersecurity, digital experience, and AI.
On cybersecurity, the state has invested in cybersecurity protection for 130,000 employees, 6,500 systems, and more than 100,000 state devices. The state's Joint Security Operations Center -- which the budget would expand with more staff and capabilities -- enables it to offer cyber protection services to every county within the state, which the CIO said is valuable because a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. ITS provides cybersecurity training to local governments in collaboration with the New York Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. Rai said cyber attack surface management capabilities will be available soon.
Digital experience in the state has been led by the state's first Chief Customer Experience Officer Tanya Webster; in January, the state unveiled its first customer experience report to demonstrate the progress it has made. The proposed budget includes $130.7 million to fund technology projects and upgrades that, among other things, will support the digital service experience.
"If you don't have the user experience in your mind -- how the citizen interacts with a system -- you're just going to come up with a new shiny technology which does the same thing it did yesterday," Rai said.
The governor's approach to AI with this budget is to enhance the state's AI educational infrastructure -- both through training and the creation of an AI sandbox, Rai said. The intention, he said, is to combat concerns that AI may take jobs from humans by gaining the trust of the employees using AI tools and ensuring they are ready to do so. The budget calls for investing an additional $90 million in capital grants for the Empire AI initiative, and $15 million in university-level AI -- $10 million at the State University of New York and $5 million at the City University of New York.
"I think that education will go a long way in understanding 'What is AI?'" Rai said, noting the existence of misconceptions about the technologies. "And then adoption will be more beneficial to the employees and the state -- and ultimately to the citizens of New York."
Officials will be leveraging curriculum that already exists from private partners such as Google to train employees on AI, he said. The state is currently in planning on this, but aims to equip humans in the workforce to better leverage the technologies. New York plans to implement a train-the-trainer model, as has been seen in digital literacy and data literacy.
"We want to use the tool for timely services, for efficiency, for productivity -- not to replace the human being," Rai said.
The AI sandbox would provide a secure environment for employees to practice working with AI using a sanitized version of data sets. Rai said the state will start working with applications that have already been proven, such as collating and analyzing a document's content in an agency-specific context.
Significantly, the budget proposes bulking up New York's IT workforce -- recommending 295 additional full-time equivalent employees in ITS -- to become less reliant on private-sector technology vendors. If approved, it would make ITS one of just eight state agencies among more than 50 to add staff, Reif said -- representing an increase of more than 7 percent to its total workforce.
According to Rai, the payoff is clear: he said that in the 15 months of his employment, in many cases, every dime spent on state workers saves two dimes in outside spending. A cost-efficient approach is important for an organization that operates through taxpayer money, he explained.
"We can get a state employee to do the same job a contractor will do at half the price," the CIO said. "That's the business case, and we have proven it." To ensure such successful program implementations, he said, the state has changed its program implementation methodology to an agile approach, segmenting large programs into smaller components. A cultural change is underway in ITS, Rai said, due in part to the Office's increasing capacity to improve service delivery.