(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds is responding to critics of her decision hire Amazon to manage all state computer systems and networks — and to outsource state government I-T services. Cognizant Government Solutions will provide I-T services for state agencies and employees and all state websites and executive branch data will be moved to Amazon’s cloud environment.
Democrats say I-T specialists in state government 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-1-B visa holders. According to data evaluated by the National Foundation for American Policy, Amazon got approval to hire over 46-hundred H-1-B visa holders in the last federal budget year — more than any other U-S company — and Cognizant ranked 8th.
Lahn said on social media that if he’s elected governor, state contracts will be evaluated based on what percentage of the workforce is made up of Iowans. Reynolds says Cognizant is fully committed to hiring an Iowa-based workforce for state government work and at no point during negotiations did Cognizant or the governor consider employing H-1-B visa holders.
Reynolds also says Cognizant has guaranteed to offer equal or better employment to the 200 state workers who are providing I-T services today. Yesterday (Tuesday), the governor said the contracts with Cognizant and Amazon would save the state over half a BILLION dollars in the next decade, but she did not say how much the state would be paying the companies.
Reynolds says I-T services are not a core function of state government — and she says Amazon will provide an efficient, flexible and secure service for state computer networks and data held in the executive branch.
