We, the undersigned, are City of Austin IT employees and non-IT coworkers who rely on their service and witness its impacts on everyday Austinites.
We call on City Manager Broadnax to stop the "One ATS" initiative, end the Citywide consolidation of all 1,000+ IT employees into Austin Technology Services, and keep our talented workers rooted in departments where their specialized knowledge and experience are needed most.
City workers support modernization, cybersecurity, and efficiency. But "One ATS" (OATS) is hurtling forward without necessary safeguards, open communication, or a timeline appropriate to its enormous consequences. Concerns have been raised with you, your Executive Team, ATS Director + CIO Kerrica Laake, Deputy Chief Information Officer + Interim Chief Security Officer Brian Gardner, Chief Financial Officer Ed Van Eenoo, and many others: OATS will reduce the quality of our work, threaten our livelihoods, jeopardize our services, and put our City at great risk, all while using flawed justifications based on misleading comparisons to peer cities and back-room analysis.
Multiple City departments have sounded alarms. In separate memos, Austin Energy, Austin Water, Austin Transportation & Public Works, Austin Watershed, and others have raised dire concerns about consolidation. These departments cited "great risks" to electric grid reliability, public health, resident safety, and essential City operations. In both official surveys and private communications, workers throughout the City have made it clear that removing embedded technology expertise from departments with widely differing needs will degrade critical emergency and infrastructure operations, destabilize essential services that Austinites rely on, and cost time and money that has not been accounted for. Even the City's own consultant highlighted significant risks and recommended a minimum three-year timeline for a reorganization of this magnitude. Despite these dire warnings, you have compressed the OATS process into just a few months and refused to adjust course.
