Vermont’s school redistricting task force members knew from their first meeting in August that they had a tight timeline to meet a December deadline. So one of the first things the group did was ask the Agency of Education for data. The information would be crucial to fulfill the group’s mandate to recommend new school district boundaries that could redefine the public education landscape in Vermont for generations.
But the data the education agency provided were “all over the map,” according to Sen. Martine Gulick (D-Chittenden-Central), who cochairs the task force. The agency did not provide some of the requested stats, including data describing the demographics of students who are tuitioned to schools in certain out-of-state border towns, the number of agency staff positions that are federally funded, and the costs shared between school districts and state-contracted mental health providers. And some of the data sets the agency did provide were difficult to use because they were labeled inconsistently.
The redistricting task force members were facing a problem that Vermont policy makers encounter all too often, according to other state legislators who spoke with Seven Days: The data that state agencies release are frequently incomplete or inaccurate. Outdated information technology systems often are to blame.
That’s because many of state government’s data systems are relics of another era — built decades ago and stitched together over time on aging computer code. The network of antiquated information technology has slowed emergency response, wasted staff time, exposed citizens’ personal information and resulted in financial penalties. Attempts to modernize systems have repeatedly blown budgets and deadlines, leaving the state without lasting solutions.
“If we don’t have the right data, the consequences could be devastating.”
Sen. Martine Gulick
As lawmakers confront increasingly complex issues, their ability to make evidence-based decisions still hinges on a digital infrastructure that too often can’t keep up.
“Data is incredibly important to everything we do in the legislature,” Gulick said. “If we don’t have the right data, the consequences could be devastating.”
Data from the Agency of Education are central to the ongoing effort to transform Vermont’s public school system. Gaps and errors in the data pose a serious problem for lawmakers, Gulick said.
At a joint House and Senate education hearing in January, Education Secretary Zoie Saunders acknowledged long-standing data issues but said they had been resolved. Legislators continued to voice doubts.
“I’m a little concerned because [the Agency of Education] is very, very behind in data, and a lot of the data that they provided school districts this year was not correct,” Sen. Ruth Hardy (D-Addison) said during a Senate Finance Committee meeting later that month.
Staffing levels at the agency contribute to the data woes, legislators said. Fewer staff can lead to slower processing times, faster burnout and greater risk for mistakes. In May, after receiving a public records request from a parent for complaints to administrators about special education, the agency accidentally provided a spreadsheet that included confidential information that should not have been released, including the students’ names, birth dates, disabilities and parents. The agency blamed human error.
Effective IT processes can minimize the risk of such mistakes, whether staff are collecting and analyzing data or processing and redacting spreadsheets. To improve practices and standards, in 2017 Gov. Phil Scott established the Agency of Digital Services, which also oversees management of the state’s IT projects. The agency assumed maintenance responsibilities for all the state’s digital systems, many of which were built in the 1980s and 1990s.
The extent of the challenge facing the new agency was soon on display. At the time, Vermont’s Department of Labor was several years into a sweeping project to update its unemployment insurance processing system. It was built on an obsolete programming language, COBOL, that a shrinking number of employees could maintain. The state partnered with Idaho, Iowa and North Dakota to develop a new system, but after a series of delays, overspending and accountability concerns, the consortium collapsed in February 2020. Vermont had spent $10.5 million in federal funding on the project.
Just a few weeks later, the department’s beleaguered, 40-year-old unemployment system repeatedly crashed under a surge of COVID-19 claims, leaving more than 30,000 Vermonters waiting for benefits. Later that spring, yet another setback occurred when the department mailed the Social Security numbers of 5,500 claimants to the wrong employers. In 2024, the Department of Labor hired a vendor to replace the mainframe unemployment insurance system, with completion expected by next summer.
A different benefit system heightened state officials’ anxieties during this fall’s federal shutdown. Vermont’s food benefits program, 3SquaresVT, faced unprecedented challenges as federal funds were suspended, said Rep. Theresa Wood (D-Waterbury), who chairs the House Committee on Human Services. State officials on the Vermont Emergency Board authorized $6 million in state aid to pay the benefits, but there were doubts about whether the 3SquaresVT IT system would be able to deliver the aid. Staff from various agencies scrambled to ensure distribution of benefits to more than 36,000 households within days — and pulled it off.
Wood called that a remarkable achievement, especially for a state government not known to move this quickly on major IT challenges. Wood said it’s more typical for lawmakers to ask agencies for data, only to be told that agency staff can’t respond immediately; the agency’s data systems can’t generate the requested information; or it could take weeks to produce.
Ivy Enoch, director of policy and advocacy at Hunger Free Vermont, urged the state government to invest in IT advancements before another crisis tests the system.
“We need Vermont’s technology system to work for us, not against us,” Enoch said. “Investing in improvements and modernization will allow us to be more nimble in the future when so much is on the line.”
High-quality data systems should have been a policy imperative years ago, according to Matthew Bernstein, who leads the Office of the Child, Youth and Family Advocate, an independent office that closely monitors the Agency of Human Services’ Department for Children and Families.
“Our inability to have functional data systems is especially hard to understand given that, done well, they are really the key to unlocking safety and well-being and savings for the state,” Bernstein said.
DCF’s data systems are the oldest of their kind in the nation. A 2021 University of Vermont report commissioned by the legislature called the systems “insufficient to support effective decision making.” Reporting by VTDigger two years later found the platforms struggled to track foster children’s allergies and basic custody information.
In a 2023 report to lawmakers, Bernstein’s office wrote that, “Without a reliable child welfare information system, the Vermont legislature does not have an accurate picture of the needs of Vermont’s children, youth, and families.” It also warned that, “The confidentiality of the system as a whole means that the extent of the crisis is kept out of sight of the legislature and the governor.”
Earlier this year, DCF was simply unable to provide legislators with data they sought about the use of mechanical restraints such as handcuffs by sheriffs on children in the state’s custody. The department’s paper-based case management system can make it cumbersome — or at worst, unsafe — to obtain information about children in an emergency, according to Wood.
Aryka Radke, deputy commissioner of DCF’s Family Services Division, told legislators during a meeting of the Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee last week that existing systems cannot track some of the department’s most critical information, such as serious physical injuries of children, staff safety incidents and the fingerprint records of foster parents. Those limitations have serious consequences, Radke acknowledged, including wasted staff time, missed funding opportunities and data inconsistencies.
Bernstein said these shortcomings make it more difficult to ensure children’s safety and well-being, which should be the state’s top concern. Data enable efforts to hold agencies accountable and check that policies are working as intended.
“We’re paying a lot of money as a state to care for these children, and at the very least, we have to have an aggregate understanding of how they are being cared for,” he said.
Radke pushed back against the criticisms in an emailed statement to Seven Days.
“We respectfully disagree with the assertion that policymakers have been ‘kept in the dark,’” Radke wrote, explaining that some information is kept confidential but the division provides qualitative updates and a variety of data to policy makers “even when doing so requires extensive manual compilation.”
The department is currently reviewing vendor proposals to replace its information system with a new one, estimated for completion in spring 2028, though the timeline may shift. Radke said the project will cost between $30 million and $50 million.
The state’s information technology projects since 2018 are estimated to cost more than $760 million, including all the anticipated expenses needed to implement, operate and maintain each project, according to this year’s Agency of Digital Services annual report. The report does not include projects with implementation and operating costs less than $500,000.
Agency of Human Services expenses account for more than half of the state’s IT spending. The most expensive line item, nearly twice as costly as the next largest, is a plan for a new, overarching eligibility and enrollment system for various health care and economic benefit programs, including Vermont Health Connect. The state’s health insurance marketplace was plagued by technical problems when it launched in 2013, confounding Vermonters who were trying to sign up for health insurance and ultimately leading the state to hire multiple vendors for expensive fixes. The consolidated system will cost more than $230 million to implement and operate, according to estimates.
The public can see an overview of ongoing information technology projects on a public dashboard hosted by the Agency of Digital Services. Lawmakers mandated the tool after State Auditor Doug Hoffer recommended stronger reporting requirements for the agency in a 2023 audit of IT projects. Of the six Hoffer reviewed, only one had been delivered on time and within budget.
The dashboard lists project start dates, initial and current estimated completion dates, and other indicators to track progress. But it does not show whether actual implementation costs outpace original estimates. For instance, the Agency of Transportation’s new software to track and manage department assets was originally projected to cost roughly $4.5 million. Now five years past the project’s initial delivery date, its implementation cost has increased by $8 million, nearly tripling the original price. Yet the dashboard displays both initial and current cost estimates as $12.7 million, masking the cost overrun.
The public-facing dashboard was one of several steps the Agency of Digital Services took in response to the 2023 audit, according to Chelsea Cockrell, communications strategist with the agency. Cockrell said it also tightened project management protocols, added oversight mechanisms and clarified how project metrics are defined.
“I do think that state information technology is one of the biggest issues for state government, and I don’t think it gets the attention it deserves.”
Sen. Rob Plunkett
Rep. Kathleen James (D-Manchester) said the agency’s dashboard is an example of a positive accountability feedback loop: The auditor identified the problem, legislators created a policy fix, and the agency implemented the solution. James sits on the Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee and is chair of the House Committee on Energy and Digital Infrastructure, which oversees most information technology issues for the House.
“We’re working really hard to improve our oversight of how those systems are working and how the money that we’re investing in those systems is being spent,” James said.
Policy makers who want to protect public funds from blown budgets and timelines could take a cue from the private sector, according to Dimitri Garder, founder and former CEO of Global-Z, a technology company based in Vermont that provides address, email and name verification, plus other data-quality services, to retail companies worldwide.
Garder encourages state leaders to adopt a more innovative workflow known as an agile methodology: Instead of the traditional “waterfall” approach, where projects are defined up front and delivered years later, agile methods allow states to build software in short, flexible cycles. Garder argues that the approach allows agencies to save money and adapt to changing needs.
“This is the path to improving the way we do business as a state and the way we pass policy,” Garder said, adding that the state should start its transition to agile methodology with a pilot project. “The governor could bring in private-sector people to teach them how to do it, and it wouldn’t take 10 years; it’d take six months.”
Sen. Rob Plunkett (D-Bennington), who chairs the Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee, said state agencies are already using agile methodology. The challenge is adjusting vendor contracts as needs evolve.
DCF told prospective vendors applying to build its new child welfare information system that the department preferred “an Agile implementation approach that fosters collaboration, iterative development, and flexibility.” But Bernstein, the youth advocate, worries that the project is actually structured to encourage long-term, high-value contracts. His office warned in a May letter that prioritizing process over outcomes could undermine the new technology’s success.
Plunkett plans to meet with James and Sen. Wendy Harrison (D-Windham), who chairs the Senate Committee on Institutions, to discuss how their committees can address data challenges when the legislature reconvenes in January.
“I do think that state information technology is one of the biggest issues for state government, and I don’t think it gets the attention it deserves,” Plunkett said.
For Vermont’s citizen legislature — typically in person only from January to May — every week counts. Lawmakers rarely have months to wait for data, whether related to federal food benefits or the state’s public school system.
“Our timelines are often very short, very intense, and if we don’t get the data on time, then the veracity of our work is, I would say, in question,” Gulick said.
That challenge will be especially acute as legislators resume major education reform, beginning with the school redistricting task force’s proposals. Policy makers will require additional data as the legislature and administration push for redistricting plans rooted in fundamentally different visions for Vermont’s public school system.
Last week, the task force endorsed a plan that would leave the state’s 119 existing school districts intact. It would instead create five regional “cooperative education service areas” within which school districts could merge voluntarily or share services such as special education and transportation. Scott and Education Secretary Saunders criticized the group for opting not to endorse an alternative map with district consolidation and new boundary lines, as they had directed the group to do.
The task force said in a press release that data analysis revealed that such a map would not improve access to technical education or reduce costs.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Legislative Lag | Crucial Vermont agencies rely on outdated tech — leaving lawmakers to operate in the dark”
This article appears in Nov 19-25 2025.
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