City Leaders Take Step Back in Plan to Consolidate IT Workers

City leaders are responding to the outcry from AFSCME Local 1624, the city workers’ union, and IT employees throughout the city. On Wednesday, as the Chronicle went to press, the city announced a modification of its plans for the IT consolidation known as One ATS, which was expected to concentrate all of the city’s 1,000 IT workers into one central department – Austin Technology Services. A city spokesperson told the Chronicle that it now plans to allow some workers who are crucial to day-to-day IT operations to remain in their respective departments. 

The spokesperson explained that one-third of the city’s workers are already headquartered at ATS, with the remaining two-thirds working in different departments like Austin Energy, Austin Water, and Austin Transportation and Public Works. The One ATS plan had sought to move most, if not all of them, into ATS. 

“Many employees across City departments will transition into ATS while remaining embedded within their current department performing their current responsibilities, but with more technology-focused guidance from ATS,” the spokesperson said. They added that the employees who are part of their departments’ specialized operations, which the spokesperson referred to as “operational technology,” will not be moved. They also said it is possible that some employees who are not part of their departments’ operational technology may also be allowed to stay where they are.

Brydan Summers, the president of AFSCME Local 1624, said he believed the city is feeling the strength of the pushback against the One ATS initiative. “City management is understanding the concerns that we’ve brought forward and the scale and the scope of the liability if things don’t go well,” Summers said. “So we’re not surprised to see a change.”

The change came after AFSCME presented previously undisclosed memos, gathered through public information requests, at last week’s City Council meeting showing that the leaders of four large city departments have concerns about One ATS. The concerns include the possibility that city leaders’ original plan would harm public safety and disrupt the departments’ ability to conduct daily operations. 

Of the four memos AFSCME distributed to Council members, the most pointed is from Stuart Reilly, general manager of Austin Energy, the city’s electricity provider. Reilly wrote to City Manager T.C. Broadnax in September 2025 that centralizing AE’s technology functions “poses serious risks to grid reliability, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, and operational effectiveness.” 

“AE has spent over a decade integrating IT and [operational technology] systems to support real-time grid operations, emergency response, and customer service,” Reilly wrote. “Centralization could degrade AE’s ability to respond to outages, manage critical infrastructure, and communicate effectively with customers during emergencies.” He added that Seattle’s attempt to centralize its IT workers set that city’s electric utility provider back 15 years. 

The directors of the other three departments also emphasized how deeply connected the IT services they’ve developed in-house are with their daily operations. Shay Ralls Roalson, the director of Austin Water, said the employees engaged in predictive modeling, geospatial analysis, and data analytics tools are crucial to its work. Jorge Morales, director of Austin Watershed Protection, said the department’s tech workers are essential to warning residents during flash floods and safeguarding the quality of drinking water. 

Six IT workers embedded in major city departments elaborated on the arguments during Council’s public comment period. Braniff Davis, a wildfire scientist at the Austin Fire Department, said that allowing him to remain embedded at AFD could help save lives. 

“I can provide on-site support because I report directly to a fire chief and not some supervisor in ATS,” Davis said. “Will an ATS supervisor allow me to work a weekend when a disaster strikes? Will they know what an incident commander needs during an evacuation? Will they be able to support me and my work without that knowledge?”

Nathan Wilkes, a consulting engineer in the Austin Transportation and Public Works Department, told Council he has worked for 18 years at the city on projects like the recently completed Wishbone Bridge, the 3-1-1 call center, and Austin’s network of bicycle trails. In his comments, Wilkes alluded to something the Chronicle’s sources say is well understood among IT workers, but no one wants to discuss on the record – that other departments in the city developed their own IT functions over the last decade after experiencing difficulty in receiving services from ATS.

Amenity Applewhite looks on as Nathan Wilkes argues against the One ATS initiative at a City Council meeting Credit: City of Austin

“After years of not being served by centralized ATS for widespread department and work group needs, I advocated to build department capacity to save costs and improve services,” Wilkes told Council. “I sat on the initial hiring panel for our first data team manager in 2016. I’ve seen firsthand what a capable department-embedded data team can do to build trust, capacity, and deliver results.”

Those comments came the same week city leaders confirmed they had fired three of ATS’s top employees, chief information security officer Brian Gardner and senior IT architects Hawre Sulaiman and William Snead. The city spokesperson told the Chronicle that the firings had nothing to do with data security but were instead the result of the city manager’s ongoing review of ATS. The spokesperson added that “no further details are available pending the completion of the review.” 

It is clear the One ATS initiative has captured the attention of City Council members. Several emphasized to us that the IT workers employed in departments outside ATS are subject matter experts who are valuable and necessary. 

“They are not cogs in a machine who can be moved around at will,” Council Member Mike Siegel said. “A watershed engineer who maps the floodplain, a transportation engineer who helps us visualize dangerous intersections, an airport database manager who ensures that tickets are printed and baggage is delivered – these people have technology in their titles, but are essential to programmatic operations. In our rush to save money, we should not destroy what makes our city successful.”

Council Member Krista Laine told us the city must treat the IT workers with respect. “We need to listen to the experts, and those experts are our city workers,” Laine said. “The fact that they are willing to speak out on these issues means that we currently have a good relationship, and that is something we need to prioritize and maintain.”

AFSCME’s leaders feel they’re racing against the clock to stop or at least delay the One ATS plan. The city spokesperson told the Chronicle that, beginning in May, IT employees who are not considered to be part of their departments’ operational tech will begin receiving “information about their placements within ATS and next steps.” 

“Why are transfers starting in May?” AFSCME’s Amenity Applewhite, an IT supervisor at Austin Transportation and Public Works, asked at last week’s Council meeting. “They have no operating model, no risk assessment, no cost benefit analysis, no carve-out rules, [and] zero accountability structure.”

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