(KIWA Staff Photo)
Statewide Iowa (RI) — Governor Kim Reynolds is responding to critics of her decision to hire Amazon to manage all state computer systems and networks — and to outsource state government IT services.
Cognizant Government Solutions will provide IT services for state agencies and employees, and all state websites and executive branch data will be moved to Amazon’s cloud environment. Democrats say state IT specialists will lose valuable state benefits, and Zach Lahn, the Republican nominee for governor, also criticized the moves due to Amazon’s and Cognizant’s record of hiring H-1B visa holders.
According to data evaluated by the National Foundation for American Policy, Amazon received approval to hire over 4,600 H-1B visa holders in the last federal budget year — more than any other U.S. company — and Cognizant ranked eighth. Lahn said on social media that if elected governor, he would evaluate state contracts based on the percentage of Iowa-based workers.
Reynolds says Cognizant is fully committed to hiring an Iowa-based workforce for state government work and that neither the company nor her office considered employing H-1B visa holders during negotiations.
Reynolds also says Cognizant has guaranteed to offer equal or better employment to the 200 state workers who are currently providing IT services. On Tuesday, the governor said the contracts with Cognizant and Amazon would save the state over $500 million in the next decade, but she did not say how much the state would be paying the companies.
Reynolds says IT services are not a core function of state government and argues that Amazon will provide efficient, flexible, and secure service for state computer networks and executive-branch data.
