Alabama Dept of Finance (OIT)

Overview

The Alabama Department of Finance is the state's central fiscal and administrative agency — it builds the executive budget, manages the treasury and accounting (STAARS) systems, and houses the operational divisions that run government, including the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and the Division of Purchasing.

OIT, established in 2013 and led by the Secretary of Information Technology / State CIO, is Alabama's enterprise IT authority: it sets statewide IT policy, owns the IT strategic plan, and delivers shared services (network, data center, cloud, cybersecurity) to executive-branch agencies.

For a Dell SLG seller, Finance/OIT is the most important single relationship in the state — it is both the enterprise standards-setter and, through the Purchasing Division, the gateway to statewide contracts that agencies, and in many cases local and education buyers, purchase against. Recent context matters: a May 2025 statewide cybersecurity event sharpened OIT's focus on identity, resilience, and whole-of-state security, and in Feb 2026 the state stood up a Technology Quality Assurance Board (TQAB) under OIT to govern AI and cybersecurity across executive-branch agencies.

 How this account buys
Dept of Finance / OIT (State CIO Daniel Urquhart) is the central enterprise IT authority — statewide IT policy, strategic plan, and shared services for executive-branch agencies
Division of Purchasing (CPO Christine S. Cook) runs the statewide contracts most Alabama public buyers — state, and often local/education — actually purchase against; this is the access path onto business, not Finance's own budget line
State CISO Chad Smith owns the whole-of-state security buying center, sharpened by the May 2025 cyber event
TQAB (formed Feb 2026 under OIT) now governs AI/emerging-tech adoption and standards across executive-branch agencies
Finance/OIT itself is funded mostly through cost recovery from the agencies it serves, not a large direct IT spend line — demand shows up in agency budgets, not Finance's own

Where Dell Can Play

Confirm Dell's Alabama statewide-contract coverage through the Purchasing Division — it is the access path to executive-branch agencies, not just Finance/OIT.
Make OIT (State CIO Daniel Urquhart) the anchor relationship; position infrastructure refresh and managed services against the enterprise consolidation and shared-services roadmap.
Lead security and identity into the State CISO's whole-of-state program, framed around resilience after the May 2025 cyber event and SLCGP-funded priorities.
Tie ISG and AI-ready infrastructure to OIT's cloud/data-center modernization, but confirm AI governance/guidance is in place before forecasting AI deals.
Forecast conservatively against Finance's cautious revenue outlook; emphasize cost-recovery and consolidation savings in the business case.

Budget & Fiscal

Alabama runs two main budgets — the General Fund (non-education) and the Education Trust Fund (ETF). Finance/OIT itself is not a large direct end-spender; OIT recovers much of its cost from the agencies it serves rather than a single large general-revenue line. The figures below set the funding pool that IT buys draw from.

~$3.7B

FY2026 General Fund

Non-education budget; the pool most agency IT operating spend draws from

~$9.9B

FY2026 Education Trust Fund

Education budget; K-12 and higher-ed technology sits here

~$19M

Federal cyber grant (SLCGP)

State & Local Cybersecurity Grant Program allocation supporting whole-of-state security

OIT is funded largely through cost recovery / internal service charges to the agencies it serves, not a single appropriation line — IT demand shows up across agency budgets.
Finance Director Bill Poole has repeatedly urged conservative budgeting amid economic uncertainty; forecast deals against a flattening, not expanding, revenue picture.
Confirm exact FY2026 enacted figures against the official Alabama executive budget before quoting to a customer.

Initiatives & Priorities

Whole-of-state cybersecurity

Following the May 2025 statewide cyber event, OIT and the State CISO are driving a whole-of-state security model — NIST-aligned frameworks, identity hardening, mandatory resets, and shared tooling extended to agencies and local government. A clear opening for security, identity, and resilient-infrastructure plays.

Cybersecurity Whole-of-State

Enterprise IT consolidation & shared services

OIT's mandate is to streamline IT statewide — consolidating network, data center, and shared platforms across executive-branch agencies to reduce duplicated cost. Position infrastructure refresh and managed/as-a-service offerings against the consolidation roadmap.

Consolidation Data Center

Cloud & data-center modernization

OIT delivers cloud and hosting as shared services; modernization tracks include hybrid cloud, infrastructure refresh, and resilient hosting for agency workloads. Tie ISG and AI-ready infrastructure to the enterprise hosting environment.

Cloud Modernization

AI & data governance (formalizing)

Alabama's enterprise-AI governance is moving from task-force study to standing oversight: the Technology Quality Assurance Board (TQAB), formed Feb 2026 under Act 2025-369 and OIT's authority, is charged with reviewing emerging tech, setting statewide standards (NIST AI RMF), issuing agency GenAI policies, and maintaining a pre-approved GenAI tool list. Treat AI as a relationship-building motion aligned to TQAB standards — confirm any tool is on the approved path before forecasting AI-infrastructure deals.

AI Governance

Procurement

Selling to Alabama state government runs primarily through the Department of Finance's Division of Purchasing, which competes and maintains statewide contracts that agencies buy against. Confirm first that Dell holds the right statewide contracts and that any offering aligns with OIT enterprise standards.

Vehicle / gate	What it means for Dell
Alabama statewide contracts (Purchasing Division)	The Division of Purchasing competes and maintains statewide contracts for IT goods and services; executive-branch agencies purchase against them. The primary path onto state business.
OIT enterprise services	OIT delivers network, data center, cloud, and security as shared services to agencies — a route for infrastructure and as-a-service that flows through the enterprise rather than agency-by-agency RFPs.
Cooperative purchasing	Cooperative vehicles (e.g., NASPO ValuePoint and similar national co-ops) are commonly used by Alabama public buyers — confirm Dell's coverage as a complement to state contracts for local/education reach.

Spend Signals

GovSpend · as of Aug 5, 2026

Alabama State Department of Finance (agencyId 13307) · 3-yr · FY2023–2025

Dell vs. competitors (spend, payee)

SHI International Corp reseller

$6.6M

Insight Public Sector reseller

$3.7M

Carahsoft Technology reseller

$2.5M

Agency scope: GovSpend's "Department of Finance" lookup for Alabama returned several candidate agencyIds. Only the parent record — 13307, "Alabama State Department of Finance" — carries any spending data (143,261 line items in the window). The Division of Purchasing (172274) and the State Business Systems Division (298352) both returned zero spending records and were excluded as empty/unusable; all figures below are from 13307 alone.
Fiscal basis: Alabama's state fiscal year runs October–September (confirmed against this file's own budget section), so the window here is 2022-10-01 through 2025-09-30, labeled FY2023–2025 — a different fiscal calendar than the July–June FY used for other SLG accounts in this batch (e.g. Virginia, South Carolina, Arkansas).
Even within 13307, the largest vendor buckets are fiscal pass-through, not IT buying — principal/interest payments to the State Treasurer, education and ARPA grant disbursements, and enterprise insurance premiums (Palomar Insurance) dominate; this is consistent with Finance/OIT acting as budget and treasury administrator rather than a large direct IT purchaser.
dellFootprint and brandFootprint are omitted: a single combined product-name filter (dell, poweredge, optiplex, latitude, precision, powerstore, wyse, isilon — tried both exact and fuzzy matching) and the equivalent Cisco/HPE/Lenovo/Apple keyword sets both returned zero matches against agencyId 13307 in this window. Line items here are recorded at a generic level ("SOFTWARE," "DATA PROCESSING-PROFESSIONAL," "MISCELLANEOUS") without item-level product text, so brand-level matching isn't possible from this agency's own records — it does not mean Dell/competitor product isn't flowing through the state via other agencies or the Purchasing Division's vehicles.
Direct Dell payee is negligible and below the $100K reporting floor: "Dell Marketing" appears on only 3 line items totaling $82,131; no Dell Marketing LP, Dell Financial Services, or Dell EMC records were found, so no "dell" tag appears in vendorSpend.
categories is omitted: LineItem.Category for 13307 has no IT-commodity buckets at all (only MISCELLANEOUS, GRANTS AND BENEFITS, DEBT SERVICE, SERVICES, EMPLOYEE BENEFIT, TRAVEL, UTILITIES AND COMMUNICATION).
expiringContracts is omitted: the only IT-relevant contract records under 13307 expiring in the window are five multi-vendor "Cloud Services Solutions" statewide master agreements (Carahsoft, Insight, SHI, Kyndryl, Oracle — AR2472/AR2485/AR2488/AR3710/AR2487) from the Purchasing Division's public contract listing on alabamabuys.gov — these are vehicle awards other agencies buy against, not Finance-as-buyer purchases, and buyer-vs-vehicle-owner status can't be separated from the record alone. Per methodology this is omitted rather than presented as agency demand.
openBids is omitted: only 3 open solicitations exist under agencyId 13307 (Mental Health Treatment Services for Deaf/HoH, Professional Investment Advisor/Manager Services, Opioid Settlement Funds Round 4) — none IT-relevant.
False positives excluded from keyword matching: "Tiffany Laura Dell" (a person's name) and "Town Of Pine Apple" (a municipality) both matched raw "Dell"/"Apple" vendor-name searches and were excluded as non-vendor collisions.

Power Structure

Decision-maker	Why they matter
Bill Poole State Finance Director	Cabinet-level CFO; owns the executive budget and the administrative divisions (incl. OIT and Purchasing). The top fiscal relationship and the umbrella over enterprise IT.
Daniel Urquhart Secretary of Information Technology / State CIO	Leads OIT; sets statewide IT policy and the strategic plan. Appointed July 2023; 20+ year state veteran. The key enterprise-IT relationship for the Dell motion.
Chad Smith State Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)	Reports to the State CIO; drives whole-of-state security and NIST-aligned frameworks. The buying center for security and identity.
Christine S. Cook Chief Procurement Officer, Purchasing Division	Owns statewide contracts and solicitations — the path onto state business and the contract-compliance gate.

News & Signals

Apr 2026

Budget

Legislature passes ~$3.74B FY2027 General Fund (~1% up) after Poole flags ~4% receipts decline

Tight, roughly flat funding pool for FY27 (which starts Oct 1, 2026), with the softness tied to falling interest earnings on state deposits — forecast IT against cost-recovery and consolidation savings, not expansion.

Feb 2026

AIGovernanceCybersecurity

Gov. Ivey forms Technology Quality Assurance Board (TQAB) under OIT to govern AI and cybersecurity

Stands up statewide oversight for emerging tech — NIST AI RMF standards, agency GenAI policies, and a pre-approved GenAI tool list — under Act 2025-369, which also codified OIT's cyber-governance authority. Align AI and security offerings to TQAB standards and the approved-tool path.

Jan 2026

Budget

Finance Director Bill Poole presents FY2027 budget outlook, urges conservative posture

Signals a flattening-to-declining revenue picture (interest-earnings driven); forecast IT deals against caution rather than expansion, and emphasize cost-recovery and consolidation value.

May 2025

Cybersecurity

Statewide cybersecurity event disrupts Alabama state systems; OIT mandates password resets

Sharpened OIT focus on identity, resilience, and whole-of-state security — a durable opening for security, identity, and resilient-infrastructure offerings.

Apr 2025

Leadership

OIT names Chad Smith as State CISO

Establishes a clear security buying-center owner driving NIST-aligned, whole-of-state strategy — map the security relationship to this office.