Dallas County’s struggling IT department is keeping its interim leader — for now.
The department hasn't had a "chief information officer since last summer.
Cathy Maras signed on as interim in mid-December. County commissioners recently extended her agreement because the county still has not hired a permanent replacement.
Commissioner Elba Garcia said that for now, extending the interim chief’s $275 an hour contract is the best quick fix.
“We are in such a mess when it comes to IT,” Garcia said. “I hear the IT director saying, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. And we still did it. And I regret that vote.
"With that being said, at this point, we just have to fix it and be sure that we do not do the same mistakes that we did with two different directors of IT… But performance — performance is the number one thing that Ms. Maras has to do.”
Maras’s pay won’t exceed $50,000, unless commissioners approve changes, and the agreement can be canceled any time.
“I've looked at the first phase statement work,” Commissioner John Wiley Price said. “I'm just unimpressed for what we're spending money for… Conveniently, we talk about taxpayer money. What the hell are we doing here? We're kicking the can down the road.”
There was no permanent IT leader to help navigate last year's dark web hack and software challenges.
The IT CIO supervises the assistant IT Chief of applications support and development, chief information security officer, and the financial manager.
The assistant chief currently provides “duties and directives” support from the department to Cathy Maras.
The chief oversees projects, purchases, and staff activities, asset inventory, reconciliation and software vendors license counts “to reduce costs and optimize” budget and implementing an architecture review board to govern application and infrastructure related decisions, per the Gartner report recommendation.
The IT department's 2024 budget is over $70 million — up from last year’s nearly $58 million. IT maintenance and subscriptions cost more than $14.5 million in the 2023 budget.
In August — at a cost of nearly $500,000 — the county also had approved a study of the Dallas IT department to similar counties, leadership competency assessment and improvement suggestions.
And in June, county commissioners approved almost $84,000 to strengthen the county’s firewall for “continuous cybersecurity risk mitigation and compliance.”
Some commissioners had previously been reluctant to act on IT matters until they get a report from Gartner, a company hired in August to study the county's computer systems.
That report was completed and received early this year.
Dallas County was the target of what officials described as a "cybersecurity incident" on Oct. 19.
A group of hackers who call themselves "Play" have claimed responsibility.
IT officials had warned of vulnerabilities in the county's computer operations months before an October cyber attack. And earlier this year the county increased its IT budget by millions of dollars.
Dallas County's previous IT director, Melissa Kraft, was fired and accepted another job in the area before the cyber attack.
Her predecessor, Stanley Victrum, was also fired.
“We have no damn clue what we’re doing,” Commissioner John Wiley Price said. “And then not just the last couple [of directors]. It's been the last five."
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