Chair Lee on OTPS centralization and lease impact on budget pegs
Lee asks about centralizing IT and technology needs with other agencies. Shahada notes independence requirements limit sharing but is open to exploring options. Lee then asks how the lease being included in the peg impacts other budget areas; Shahada explains the lease is not excluded from the savings target, making the peg much more difficult since it's DOI's largest OTPS item.
Okay.
And then are there areas like with technology, IT needs, all of those things in the OTPS lines that you would be able to centralize with the admin in terms of using, you know,
leveraging with other agencies to save costs there for your department?
Sharing of, I guess, resources.
I would have to get back to you on some specifics on that.
I know that there is, because of our independent oversight mandate, there is some aspects of our work that we need to make sure are not accessible to other agencies.
But certainly where there's an ability to do that, we're happy to look into that.
Okay.
And lastly, are the costs for the lease separated out when coming up with the dollar value of expected savings?
I'm sorry, could you rephrase the question?
So let me, so basically how has the lease being included in your budget impact sort of the other areas that you would potentially be able to use it for?
Well, the lease is part of the peg.
And so that actually,
makes the peg much more difficult for us because the lease is not excluded from it and that is the largest part of our OTPS budget.
Interesting.
Okay.
Okay, I'm going to pass it to Council Member Krishnan, Chair Krishnan.