HELENA — Earlier this summer, MTN News reported that the Gianforte administration was looking to centralize state agencies’ procurement, human resources, and information technology under the Montana Department of Administration. Now, DOA leaders are providing more details about the planned changes.
Department director Misty Ann Giles says her staff has been meeting with other agencies over the last few weeks to get a better understanding of their needs. Those meetings are continuing as the transition approaches.
Watch - closer look at the planned centralization:
“All of us are striving towards the same goal: to try to increase our effectiveness, increase efficiency, make things easier for all of our employees and how they do that work, and have that consistency across the enterprise,” Giles said. “So far, it's been a pretty positive conversation.”
DOA already provides a wide variety of services for other state agencies, and it currently operates HR, IT and procurement divisions. However, some of the larger state agencies have their own staff for those services. Under the new structure, those staff would start reporting directly to DOA.
“Day in and day out employees will retain their jobs,” said Giles. “There will be no pay cuts, across the board to any of our agency employees. They'll stay in their locations and still serve those agencies as their main client. This is just working smarter, and more efficiency, and thinking about us as kind of a one-company model when it comes to these operations, versus 12 distinct agencies.”
Giles said the new structure would improve oversight and allow for more standardization of practices across agencies. She said some of the biggest improvements could be in procurement – the purchasing of goods and services. She said the current system has led to some duplications, like multiple agencies signing contracts for the same software, and that it would be more efficient to use the buying power of the full state government to secure those contracts.
“Instead of having 30-plus systems that may all do a lot of the same thing, let's whittle that down to five or ten and make sure we're still meeting those needs,” she said.
DOA has authority over procurement under state law, but it can delegate that authority to other agencies. Currently, the department has primary responsibility for contracting worth more than $200,000, with different rules for purchases smaller than that.
Questions about procurement and contracts came up several times during the 2025 Montana legislative session. Lawmakers passed House Bill 627, which requires DOA to provide reports on state contracts to the Legislature. Giles said centralization would make it easier to do the required reporting.
Giles believes the changes will eventually lead to cost savings, but says that is not the primary goal.
“We're not starting from a place of, ‘Hey, we're going to try to cut X percent to save those dollars,’” she said.
DOA has launched a website, centralization.mt.gov, which includes more information about the plans for transition, including possible timelines. They currently call for starting the new structure for procurement in the fall and for HR early next year. The IT changes are expected to be more substantial, and they’re likely to take longer.
