Los Angeles County, California

Los Angeles County is the most populous county in the United States — roughly 10 million residents, larger than most U.S. states — governed by a five-member Board of Supervisors and run day-to-day through a County Chief Executive Office (CEO) overseeing roughly three dozen departments.

Enterprise technology direction lives with the County Chief Information Office (CIO), which sits inside the CEO and oversees technology, data, security, and privacy countywide; the Chief Data Office, Privacy Office, and Chief Information Security Office report up through it. Operational IT, telecom, and — critically for sellers — most procurement run through the Internal Services Department (ISD).

The County is best understood as a federated buyer: the CIO sets strategy and governance, large departments (Health Services, DHS, Sheriff, DPSS, the courts-adjacent agencies) carry their own substantial IT budgets and run their own modernization, and ISD plus the Board of Supervisors gate the contracts. For a Dell SLG seller, this is one of the largest single local-government opportunities in the country, but the entry point is the procurement machinery and the department-level buying centers, not a single central IT wallet.

The Board unanimously adopted a $50.3B FY2026-27 budget in late June 2026, up ~$1.5B from the prior year (the April 2026 Recommended Budget was $47.9B; the increase came largely from shifting ~$1.3B in restricted/special funds and ~$900M in new state behavioral-health money). It remains a cost-pressure cycle: the County carries a combined ~$4.8B AB 218 childhood-sexual-assault settlement liability (with ~150 new claims/month), plus federal/state funding risk. The adopted plan holds services largely intact but is roughly flat on headcount (a net ~202-position reduction to ~115,683 budgeted positions). IT spend is distributed across departments rather than concentrated in one central line.

• IT spending is federated: large departments (Health Services, Sheriff, Public Social Services) hold their own IT budgets and run their own modernization, so there is no single county-wide 'IT budget' line to target.
• FY2026-27 is a cost-pressure year — the ~$4.8B AB 218 settlement liability, litigation exposure, and federal/state funding risk squeeze discretionary spend, which favors efficiency, automation, and consolidation pitches over net-new capital.
• Always verify a department's own appropriation before forecasting; the County is mid-transition under Measure G (2024 voter-approved) toward an elected county executive (2028) and a nine-member board (by 2032).

Selling to LA County means navigating its procurement machinery, not a single buying desk. ISD's Procurement division buys goods and services for County departments and provides governance through the Office of Countywide Contracting; the Board of Supervisors must approve service contracts over $100,000. The County also participates in cooperative purchasing to extend other jurisdictions' pricing and terms. Confirm which department owns the requirement, then map the ISD path and any co-op vehicle.