Colorado’s state IT nerve center just announced a “realignment,” which is government-speak for “the smoke alarm has been screaming for years, so we’re calling the fire a transformation.”
The Governor’s Office of Information Technology is laying off 173 employees, about 15% of its workforce, after what The Colorado Sun described as dismal customer-satisfaction scores and complaints from the state auditor, legislative oversight bodies, and the very state agencies OIT is supposed to serve. Its chief information officer said satisfaction went from 31% to 36%, nowhere near his goal of 67%.
Thirty-six percent.
When even other bureaucrats are reviewing your service like it’s a DMV in hell, the problem is not “messaging.” It is not “stakeholder alignment.” It is not “a modern service delivery challenge.”
It is a tire fire with a login portal.
OIT is not some decorative desk in the basement. It supports the technology behind services Coloradans actually need: unemployment benefits, SNAP, Medicaid, tax refunds, cybersecurity, and the digital guts of state government. The office supports 31,000 state employees across 17 agencies. This is the backstage machinery of Colorado government.
And apparently the backstage machinery has been coughing bolts into a bucket.
The emotional target here is not the 173 workers getting pink slips. Nobody should be dancing on the heads of people losing jobs because leadership let the structure rot around them.
The target is the management fog machine that lets a core state function slide into customer-service purgatory, then wanders to the microphone and announces an “operational realignment” like accountability was just discovered behind the printer.
Who was in charge while this got bad enough to require layoffs?
What metrics were ignored?
How many agency complaints piled up before somebody admitted the dashboard was not green, it was just covered in institutional Febreze?
The state auditor had already criticized OIT for not fully addressing cybersecurity resiliency recommendations. Lawmakers had raised questions about funding, including an OIT cash fund that reportedly hit $36 million, with one Democratic representative saying that suggested divisions were being overcharged for services. OIT said the money is being transferred to the general fund and credits were provided back to agencies.
That is a beautiful Colorado government combo meal: bad service, unhappy customers, cybersecurity concerns, money questions, and then a reorg press release sprinkled with management confetti.
Now the fix is a “product-oriented delivery” model, smaller teams, fewer layers, more autonomy, less bureaucracy. Fine. Maybe it works. Maybe it should have happened years ago before 173 people got dragged into the consequences.
But let’s not pretend this is some heroic innovation story. This is the government finally admitting its internal monopoly was not serving its own customers.
Colorado government loves to regulate, fee, mandate, license, audit, lecture, and threaten everyone else. Restaurants, landlords, energy producers, employers, parents, drivers — all must comply with the holy paperwork mountain.
Meanwhile, the state’s own IT shop faceplants badly enough that agencies start throwing satisfaction surveys like bar glasses.
Regular Coloradans do not get to fail upward with jargon and a severance memo. They lose customers, contracts, jobs, money, and trust.
State government should not get softer standards just because the incompetence comes with a Capitol dome photo and a strategic plan.
Source: The Colorado Sun
Just Stop It
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