LANSING – The two largest components of the Department of Technology, Management and Budget’s executive budget request are for technology and cybersecurity work – items Department Director David Behen said Thursday could be beneficial for job growth and business attraction.

“Cyber security has been one of our top priorities. It’s only getting worse from a defense perspective, (but) from an economic development perspective, we think it can create a lot of jobs in Michigan,” Behen told the Senate Appropriations General Government Subcommittee.

He said the department blocks about 1.5 million attacks every day to the state network, and it investigates more than 1,000 incidents a month.

Under Governor Rick Snyder‘s executive budget proposal for the department, it would see an 8 percent overall increase to $1.4 billion, and General Fund would increase 18 percent to $572.76 million. Some $7 million would go toward cybersecurity improvements, and about $4.9 million ($4 million one-time and $900,000 ongoing) specifically to implement projects on the Cybersecurity Continuous Improvement Program, the director noted.

Another component of that funding, Behen said, is to have network access control piece that would look who is trying to access the network, how, from where and work on ways to prevent those types of attacks, especially where trends may exist.

“We believe we need 12 FTEs to stop these sophisticated attacks,” he said, which the committee did not appear to question.

Related, Behen said the department would also like to upgrade the state’s webpages by becoming more personalized, predictive, easy and intuitive.

“Of the 1.5 million visitors daily, 40 percent are mobile, and that’s only going to increase,” he told the committee. That is where some $6.5 million for “citizen-centric government initiatives,” as outlined by Mr. Snyder, would go.

Another $9 million (all General Fund) would go toward a new content management system for the state’s websites.

“We have 130 websites working on a 15-year-old system,” Behen said.

And $15 million is proposed for continued implementation of the Statewide Integrated Governmental Management Applications (SIGMA) system, which Behen said is running on schedule, with full replacement slated for October 1, 2017. The program expects to integrate systems and provide end-to-end support in one system for statewide administrative functions such as financial management, procurement, asset management, performance budgeting and more. It will eventually be used by all state employees, external vendors, local governments, colleges and universities.

Sen. Mike Nofs (R-Battle Creek) also sought more information on possible intent of the governor regarding a $20 million investment in the 21st Century Infrastructure Fund, but Behen said there are any number of priorities it could go toward.

“There was over 100 recommendations that focused on transportation, infrastructure, water/sewer and telecommunications. I think he’s going to be looking at both urban and rural areas for everything I just mentioned,” Behen said.

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