FY 2026-27 Proposed Midcycle Budget

Reductions  Reduces Finance's O&M budget by $145,000 in the General Purpose Fund across various various bureaus and accounts.  Equity Consideration: The equity consideration for this item has not yet been analyzed. 1. Information Technology Restorations   Reductions   In alignment with the City of Oakland's AI Working Group, the Department of Information Technology will be providing Microsoft Copilot AI licenses to staff as requested by Department Directors.  Equity Consideration: The provision of Microsoft Copilot licenses to selected staff across all Departments will provide the City's AI Working Group with information and data on possible use cases. Staff that do not have access to this tool will have the ability to perform limited functions on copilot chat, which is included with the City's Office 365 enterprise subscription.  1. Adjusts Public Safety and Citywide Services O&M by $1,111,681 in order to maintain critical information technology needs across Oakland, the Information Technology Department (ITD) typically relies on the availability of funding to address a wide continuum of needs, including: (1) operational needs identified by departments during the course of business within a fiscal year, (2) emergency needs relating to both break/fix and security threats that required immediate funding to remedy, (3) emerging strategic priorities identified by both the City Administrator and/or City Council, (4) the ability to reserve funding across multiple fiscal years to create a “refresh cycle” to help ensure that the City maintains servers, storage and computing devices and other technology that are within their usable life.  Having funding flexibility will maintain the Department’s ability to provide these critical services to City equipment and systems that drive business for the City and its residents.    Equity Consideration: ​An increase in funding will benefit all City employees across departments, and the residents that City applications serve.    2. Reduces 1.0 FTE Information Systems Specialist III, three Information Systems Specialist III positions were added in FY 2023-24 following the ransomware incident to strengthen and grow the ITD cybersecurity and infrastructure teams to protect and maintain City systems and data. As a result of prior hiring freezes and limitations, the positions were never fully filled. Freezing this position now will greatly reduce the City's ability to secure and maintain our infrastructure and systems.  Equity Consideration: Reducing staff available for technical hardware support may impact on the City’s staff response time and/or service delivery to community members.  1. Human Resources Management Restorations Strengthens the Department’s capacity to support focused police recruitment and hiring efforts through a dedicated team of 6.0 FTEs within Human Resources.  The 1.0 FTE Human Resource Analyst, Senior, 4.0 FTE Human Resource Analyst (CONF), and 1.0 FTE Human Resource Technician dedicated staffing model supports the recruitment coordination, candidate processing, and hiring activities with the goal of improving responsiveness and sustain sworn staffing pipelines.  Equity Consideration: Improved recruitment coordination and hiring processing may help reduce barriers and delays within the hiring pipeline and support workforce stability in critical public safety services. 1. Reallocates $350,000 to centralize fingerprinting services for non-safety classifications in the Human Resource Department will relieve Oakland Police Department staff from having to perform this process and more importantly, ensure that HRM directly receives fingerprinting results and are able to provide any necessary analysis of results for employees awaiting results of fingerprinting results for employment processing.  Equity Consideration: Relocating fingerprinting from OPD to HRM will provide added availability for candidates for jobs to complete their required background processes. HRM will provide the necessary information to obtain fingerprinting at other locations (e.g., UPS and other businesses offering fingerprinting services) to candidates who are unable to come to the HRM office for fingerprinting.  2. Reallocates funding to increase the Labor negotiations contract by $250,000.   Equity Consideration: An increased funding amount allows the City to work with contracted negotiators who have expertise and capacity to negotiate the City's collective bargaining agreements with its unions help the City evaluate the unions’ proposals and concerns more efficiently and effectively.    3. Enhances the current NeoGov online hiring platform by $214,000 to include e-forms. Adding eForms to the City of Oakland's current Neogov software subscription will reduce processing times of employee-related transactions and eliminate manual paperwork, allowing requests and approvals to move more quickly and accurately through the organization. eForms will provide standardized workflows, enable real-time tracking of forms and decisions, centralize records, and support more consistent, reliable service outcomes.  Equity Consideration: An equity consideration is ensuring that all employees have access to eForms, recognizing that not all staff have the same level of computer access or digital familiarity. Implementation of this new module will include basic training, clear instructions, and options for assisted access (e.g., assistance from the employee’s department or Human Resources Management, or workstations with computer access). While eForms can help standardize processes, ongoing monitoring is important to identify any groups who may experience barriers and to make practical adjustments that support consistent and equitable participation across departments.  4. Restores 1.0 FTE Human Resources Manager. The restoration of a Human Resources Manager will support the City’s ability to provide timely, consistent, and effective human resources services across departments. This position