Overview
The Ohio Department of Administrative Services (DAS) is the state's central business-operations agency — it provides shared services across HR, fleet, real estate, general services, and information technology to Ohio's executive-branch agencies. For a technology seller, two parts of DAS matter most.
First, the DAS Office of Information Technology (OIT), led by the State Chief Information Officer, sets statewide IT policy and standards, runs the InnovateOhio Platform (the state's shared cloud, data-analytics, and OHID digital-identity stack), and houses the Office of Information Security and Privacy. Second, DAS Procurement Services owns the State Term Schedules (STS) and the Cooperative Purchasing Program — the contract vehicles state agencies, counties, cities, K-12, higher ed, and other political subdivisions buy IT through, transacted on the OhioBuys e-procurement system.
DAS is best understood as both Ohio's statewide IT authority and the procurement path into the broader Ohio public sector, rather than the state's largest end-user of technology.
- DAS OIT is the technology buying/standards center — State CIO Katrina Flory owns InnovateOhio Platform, cloud, and data-analytics direction
- DAS Procurement Services shapes access — it owns the State Term Schedules (STS) and Cooperative Purchasing Program that the whole Ohio public sector transacts against
- OhioBuys is the approval gate — requisitions, solicitations, and STS catalogs are all managed and awarded through it
- Fastest compliant path: get listed as an active STS vendor, then reach counties/cities/K-12/higher ed through the free Cooperative Purchasing Program rather than one-off RFPs
Where Dell Can Play
- Confirm Dell's Ohio State Term Schedule coverage and reseller scope — it is the access path to the entire Ohio public sector through the Cooperative Purchasing Program, not just DAS itself.
- Lead the IT relationship with State CIO Katrina Flory's office, tied to InnovateOhio Platform cloud, data-analytics, and OHID modernization where Dell infrastructure and services attach.
- Bring governed-AI infrastructure and use cases aligned to Ohio's AI Council and state AI policy — meet the approval-workflow and procurement-disclosure requirements up front.
- Track the OISP CISO transition (Drake to interim Hemker) and rebuild the security buying-center map; position cyber and fraud-detection offerings that fit the AI-assisted tooling direction.
- Engage the late-2025 contact-center modernization and cloud-migration tracks early, and ensure offerings are onboarded and discoverable in OhioBuys.
Budget & Fiscal
DAS is funded through a mix of general revenue and cost recovery on the shared services it provides to agencies; its leverage is statewide IT direction and the contract vehicles, more than a single large IT line item. Ohio's FY2026–FY2027 operating budget (Am. Sub. H.B. 96) was signed by Gov. DeWine on June 30, 2025.
- Much of DAS IT delivery is funded by chargeback/cost recovery to served agencies rather than a single GRF IT appropriation — confirm the funding source for any specific program before forecasting.
- The largest agency IT budgets (Medicaid/JFS, Taxation, BMV/Public Safety, etc.) sit with those agencies; DAS OIT sets standards and runs shared platforms they consume.
Initiatives & Priorities
The state's shared digital platform built on three pillars — user experience, OHID digital identity, and data analytics — with the data layer hosted in AWS. IOP is the consolidation point for cloud, identity, and analytics across agencies and a natural place to attach infrastructure, data, and AI offerings.
Cloud Data Digital IdentityDAS supports a multi-agency AI Council and published a state AI policy setting guardrails for generative AI use, approval workflows, employee training (via InnovateUS), and procurement disclosure. By mid-2026 the program had scaled to 130+ approved AI use cases (roughly 87 in production, the rest in development/PoC), 15,000+ employees trained, and a dedicated multi-environment AI sandbox — a large, active governed-AI buying environment (figures per State CIO Flory; confirm before forecasting).
AI GovernanceOIT is moving agencies toward cloud with a 'teach them to fish' playbook model, plus CMS modernization (HCL to Contentful) and a contact-center platform refresh (RFP issued late 2025). Infrastructure, migration, and managed-services opportunities sit here.
Cloud ModernizationThe Office of Information Security and Privacy runs statewide security tooling, now with AI-assisted threat monitoring and fraud detection. Note a leadership transition: CISO Holly Drake departed in December 2025, with deputy Matthew Hemker stepping in as interim CISO.
Cybersecurity AIProcurement
Selling to or through DAS runs on pre-established contract vehicles transacted in OhioBuys, not one-off RFPs for every buyer. Confirm Dell's State Term Schedule coverage is active and correctly scoped, and that the right co-op pathway is in place to reach agencies and political subdivisions.
| Vehicle / gate | What it means for Dell |
|---|---|
| State Term Schedules (STS) | DAS-established multi-vendor schedules for IT and non-IT goods and services. Listed vendors and approved price pages can be sold to registered Cooperative Purchasing Program members — the core IT vehicle. |
| Cooperative Purchasing Program | Free, perpetual membership that lets counties, cities, K-12, higher ed, and other political subdivisions buy off state contracts, extending DAS vehicles across the Ohio public sector. |
| OhioBuys | The state's enterprise e-procurement system (DAS-overseen, interfaced with OAKS) where requisitions, solicitations, contracts, and STS catalogs are managed — the transaction layer to be onboarded to. |
Spend Signals
GovSpend · as of Aug 10, 2026Dell vs. competitors (spend, payee)
Brand footprint — all channels (est.)
Higher of two conservative lenses: product-name match · manufacturer tag. Both undercount — treat as floors.
Expiring contracts (re-compete)
| Contract | Vendor | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| DAS Agency Cyber Assessment (DBDAS-26-06-001) | Berry Dunn McNeil Parker LLC | Sep 30, 2026 |
Open bids / RFPs
| Solicitation | Due |
|---|---|
| PagerDuty 40 Licenses Ohio DAS | Aug 12, 2026 |
| Dell Laptops and Docking Stations Ohio DAS | Aug 12, 2026 |
| Cisco DCN Subscriptions Renewal Ohio DAS | Aug 13, 2026 |
| State of Ohio Computer Center Steady-State Operations (SOCC-SS) RFP Ohio DAS | Sep 30, 2026 |
- Ohio state fiscal year is July–June (confirmed via the Ohio Senate/LSC glossary), matching the H.B. 96 biennial budget window; spend reflects POs where DAS itself (agencyId 19095) is the buyer of record, consistent with the account's existing caution that DAS is often the state's IT/vehicle authority rather than the underlying buyer for statewide STS purchases made by other agencies.
- Dell Marketing's $66.7M payee total is overwhelmingly Microsoft Select Plus software-licensing resold through Dell, not Dell-branded hardware — sampled the largest line items and all read 'Microsoft Select Plus LSPs Ame Software.' A 'Dell Pro Slim Plus QBS1250' desktop bid was open as a current signal of live Dell hardware interest as of early August 2026 but has since closed (see openBids note below) and is no longer a better current signal than the payee figure.
- dellFootprint and categories are omitted: LineItem.Category is unpopulated for DAS records (0 results), and product-text keyword matching for Dell surfaced no confirmed genuine Dell-hardware hits — the top matches were Microsoft-licensing and unrelated facilities-software resellers (Singlesource IT, Testforce USA, Brown Enterprise Solutions), confirmed by sampling line-item text.
- Cisco brandFootprint excludes Brown Enterprise Solutions (~$603K), which resells Microsoft licensing rather than Cisco gear; the remainder was spot-checked via Liona Enterprises ('Cisco 534612... Computer equipment') and reads as genuine. HPE (hpe/proliant/aruba keywords, ~$1.46M) is omitted entirely — 100% of that total traced to Motorola Solutions radio/telephone equipment, a false positive, so the real HPE signal is effectively $0. Lenovo (~$59K) and Apple (~$10K) are both below the $100K bar.
- openBids thinned from 7 to 4 on the 2026-08-10 refresh: SolarWinds Serv-U renewal, the Dell Pro Slim Plus QBS1250 desktop bid, Smartnet Maintenance (UNS), and Red Hat Ansible Renewal all closed 2026-08-05–2026-08-07. Checked the full set of DAS bids due 2026-08-10 or later (13 records) for IT-relevant replacements — only facilities/uniform/janitorial items remained beyond the 4 listed, so the panel was not padded back up to 7.
Power Structure
| Decision-maker | Why they matter |
|---|---|
| Kathleen Madden Director, DAS | Leads the department since July 2021; sets overall direction for shared services and procurement. Top relationship for the agency-wide motion. |
| Katrina Flory State Chief Information Officer (DAS OIT) | Permanent State CIO since 2021 (prior deputy CIO ~10 years); owns statewide IT strategy, the InnovateOhio Platform, AI Council membership, and cloud direction. The key IT relationship. |
| Matthew Hemker Interim State CISO (OISP) | Former deputy CISO; stepped in as interim after Holly Drake's December 2025 departure and still shown as interim as of mid-2026 (no permanent appointment confirmed). Owns statewide security policy and tooling — treat as acting and re-confirm status. |
| InnovateOhio Platform team (DAS OIT) Cloud / data analytics / OHID | Runs the shared platform pillars (user experience, digital identity, data analytics on AWS) — the buying center for shared infrastructure, identity, and data services. |
| DAS Procurement Services State Term Schedules & Cooperative Purchasing | Owns STS, the co-op program, and OhioBuys onboarding — the path onto the vehicles that reach the whole Ohio public sector. |
News & Signals
Sources
- Ohio DAS — Department home
- InnovateOhio Platform
- Ohio Procurement — Cooperative Purchasing Program
- GovTech — Ohio CIO Katrina Flory Expands and Evolves Digital Services
- GovTech — Top Ohio Cybersecurity Official Is Returning to Academia
- Community Solutions — Ohio DAS releases policy governing use of AI
- Ohio Tech News — AI25 2026: people defining Ohio's AI economy (Flory / AI Council scale)
- NASCIO — Ohio's Blueprint for Empowering Statewide AI Innovation
- DAS OIT — Matthew Hemker (Interim State CISO) bio
- Governor DeWine — FY2026–27 budget signed (H.B. 96)