2025-2027 Budget Guideline Memorandum
North Dakota Information Technology (NDIT) has projected service rates for the 2025-2027
biennium. The rate schedules and a brief description of the services for Data Processing and
Telecom may be found on the NDIT website at https://www.nd.gov/itd/support/billing. Rates that
are highlighted in bold are the rates that changed from the 2023-2025 budget instructions.
Each biennium NDIT looks at the need to adjust the rates for the services provided. Because it is
difficult for agencies to adjust their funding once the budget has been approved, every attempt is
made to keep NDIT rates from increasing during the biennium. The following is an overview of
the rate changes for the upcoming biennium.
The increased staffing costs for NDIT, inflation, and changes in demand for future technologies
make setting rates for the future biennium a challenge. Vendors providing licenses and support of
their products have been affected by increased staffing costs and inflationary costs as well. These,
in turn are passed on to NDIT as increases. These increases affect all types of hardware we
purchase regardless of make, model and the intended use. From networking to desktops, wireless
access points to servers, the hardware and associated support costs are projected to increase 10-
20% in the next two years. In most cases, software vendors have also increased the per user
license cost of their products.
The following are short overviews of the major services provided by NDIT. The forecasted
changes to these service fees are included in the overview. NDIT will be scheduling a meeting
with as many agency fiscal staff as we can between May 15th and July 15th to review the
forecasted changes.
Enterprise Project Management Office
Agencies with large projects will be billed a fee to cover the costs associated with the Enterprise
Project Management Office and large project reporting requested by the Legislature. The fee will
be $3,000 per every $500,000 of project costs, billed each year for the duration of the project.
This fee will be capped at $30,000 per project per fiscal year.
Business Application Support
NDIT provides business application support for applications hosted by NDIT. This may be
direct support by NDIT staff or a collaborative effort from NDIT and the third party vendor that
may host a business application. Business Application Support consists of a team of blended
skillsets including business analysis, development, and specific application support. It will not
include infrastructure support or database management as these services are recovered in
application hosting fees.
Business application support costs are recovered in a flat monthly charge covering an estimated
level of support. This is referred to as a Maintenance & Operations agreement. This agreement
covers the standard support and upkeep of an application.
New features or functionality built into the application will be a charge over and above the
maintenance & operations agreement and will be charged with the published hourly rates for the
services required.
The NDIT Business Application Support teams support many software development tools and
languages. As part of our cybersecurity posture NDIT upgrades versions of our tools and
languages on a regular basis. NDIT includes the development costs associated with changes to
applications as a result of upgrading the overall toolset within the hosting costs of those
applications. Examples are Java/Websphere, Oracle, SQL, MySQL and .Net applications.
Agencies will need to account for the changes to applications for unsupported toolsets described
below.
Legacy Application Surcharges
NDIT will notify agencies of end of life software they are utilizing and will give a minimum of 12
months’ notice to complete an upgrade. Agencies that choose to remain on legacy software should
budget for a minimum surcharge of 25% to cover the operating costs of the legacy hosting
environments. Legacy hosting environments includes those that are on extended support.
System Security Plans
Agencies required to complete a system security plan due to compliance requirements should
budget for a Statement of Work engagement to account for the effort needed by the Governance,
Risk, and Compliance team. The system security plan documents the categorization of the
system; security and privacy controls selected, implement, and assessed; and how the system will
be continuously monitored.
End User Compute (Desktop Support)
End User Compute is a holistic approach to managing all of the personal computing devices
within an organization, including laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. It includes asset
management, hardware and software deployment, device support and management,
access/authorization management and basic training on devices. The monthly fee includes
hardware replacement cost (machine, monitor, keyboard, mouse) support staff, and support
toolsets.
Effective July 1st, 2025, NDIT will be extending the replacement cycle to 48 months for laptops
and 60 months for desktops, and monitors as failures occur. This change will allow the rate
increase to remain below 15% for the standard desktop and laptop offering for the 2025-2027
biennium.
Microsoft Productivity Suite
The productivity suite is delivered in two license tiers. Office 365 Premium will be a cost of
$47.60 per user. This includes the Office desktop client, Windows 10/11 OS, and Power BI.
Enterprise Voice is included in the Premium bundle although it is recovered in the phone rate.
Several key security components required for state employees are also included in this bundle.
These are per license fees that will apply to any accounts that require a Microsoft user license
including service accounts, privileged accounts, or information accounts as needed. Co-pilot is
not included in this fee.
Office 365 Basic (State) will be a cost of $34.85 per user. This license bundle includes the
features from the premium bundle, with the exception of voice, but with a web client experience
rather than a desktop client experience. This bundle does not include enterprise voice, therefore
no phone services are available with this license. A windows license is now included effective
July 1, 2025.
Network Rates (WAN connections)
Endpoint network rates for fiber and non-fiber locations will increase 15% for the 2025-27
biennium. Base connectivity for state agencies with non-fiber endpoints on STAGEnet will be
250 Mbps. There are additional bandwidth options available for additional cost.
Agencies that have any broadband connectivity (DSL, cable, wireless, satellite, cellular) are
reminded that all connectivity should be purchased through NDIT and there is an associated
broadband add-on charge in addition to vendor cost of the broadband connection. The add-on
rates will increase to $210 per circuit for the 2025-2027 biennium. The premium add-on rate
applies to locations that require network to network connectivity and comes with extended
support hours. The broadband connection provided by the local telecommunication company is
a direct bill back to each agency and is subject to rate changes throughout the biennium based on
provider. Due to the higher cost of endpoint equipment, locations with bandwidth greater than
500 Mbps will have a broadband premium fee of $465 per circuit.
NDIT will begin billing a connection fee of $305 per circuit for Off Premises connectivity
effective July 1, 2025. These connections include Net to Net VPN tunnels as well as dedicated
circuits to or from another vendor that would need a secure connection for Server-to-Server
communications between the Vendor and the State network. NDIT will work with each agency
currently utilizing this service to budget for this next biennium.
Agencies frequently change office locations during a biennium. Historically NDIT has assisted
with the relocation of circuits and equipment at no cost to the agency. Due to the volume of
relocations as well as the additional support requested for these moves, NDIT will begin
assessing agencies a minimum cost of $2,000 per move as of July 1st, 2025.
Technology Fee
The technology fee for the 2025-2027 Biennium will be based on Microsoft Premium users and
will be $75.50 per user. This fee covers hardware, software, and support for the network
backbone, the data center and the redundant internet. It includes VPN, Anti-Virus, and multifactor
authentication for all users. The fee includes any hardware and staffing support of all
Microsoft productivity tools such as Office, Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Stream,
Planner and several others. The support team recovered in this fee also support the Microsoft basic
users and will support any future co-pilot users.
The Technology Fee also covers the expenses associated with providing enterprise services and
solutions such as the Enterprise Architects, Adobe Sign and the State Website Platform.
Adobe Sign will no longer be included in the Technology fee in the upcoming biennium due to
limited adoption since the pandemic. NDIT will share utilization data with individual agencies
during the budget process.
ConnectND
NDIT bills each agency for the cost of ConnectND (the PeopleSoft financials and human resource
applications). Each agency has a ConnectND fee on their data processing bill each month.
Historically this rate has been based on a combination of legislatively authorized FTE as well as
appropriated funds. Effective July 1, 2025 the metric for this allocation will be based on the
Legislatively Authorized FTE and the legislative authorized budgets will not impact this rate.
- $27.31 per month for each legislatively authorized FTE identified in the 2023-2025
Legislative Appropriations book.
Storage Rates
NDIT storage rates are expected to remain unchanged for the 2025-2027 Biennium. Enterprise
backup storage will increase to $.05 per GB. Agencies that have significant storage growth
projections should meet separately with NDIT to determine if other storage pricing tiers will help
to mitigate the cost impact of their storage growth. NDIT continues to explore storage options
available from cloud providers.
General Hosting Rates
Server fees will increase to $360 per base server and $240 per base server for disaster recovery.
Application hosting for SQL, mySQL, Websphere and Oracle applications will be based on
database size and computing resources beginning July 1st, 2025. This allows for better accuracy in
determining shared infrastructure and database administrator costs per application. This will create
varying changes to specific application costs. NDIT will work with agencies to identify specific
application costs.
Agencies should review their current usage levels and anticipate any areas of growth to determine
increases for specific hosting services. Increased usage of Dynamics platforms, Robotic Process
Automation, Chatbots, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, PowerBI Publishing, Data
Analytics and Data Lake solutions will incur hosting fees on a deployment by deployment basis.
Mainframe
NDIT will partner with the remaining two agencies with applications running on the zSeries
mainframe platform in an effort to help guide the journey towards the platform’s retirement.
This effort is now aligning to the change in chargeback from individual CPU usage to a flat fee
for the two remaining agencies. This fee will be split based on current biennium utilization
averages. NDIT will work with each agency to align chargeback with necessary programs or
funding sources within the paying agency.
AS400
NDIT will partner with the remaining two agencies with applications running on the AS400
platform in an effort to help guide the journey towards the platform’s retirement. This effort is
now aligning to the change in chargeback from individual CPU usage to a flat fee for the two
remaining agencies. This fee will be split evenly between the two remaining agencies. NDIT
will work with each agency to align chargeback with necessary programs or funding sources
within the paying agency. If new hardware is needed before the retirement of this platform,
current estimates are about $200,000.
Telecommunications
For the 2025-2027 biennium, the basic phone service provided as Teams voice will be $30 per
line. The legacy Avaya voice service will be $37.50 per line as this deprecated service requires
specific skills and licensing above our standard offering. This rate will still include all the phone
features as well as the licenses needed for establishing a state specific government phone number.
This rate does not include a physical telephone. Options are available for a physical phone upon
request. Rightfax services are included in the basic phone rate charged for that fax number.
Call Center costs reflect the new Genesys solution currently being implemented and will be $130
per agent per month. Call center licenses will be audited on an annual basis and agency bills will
be adjusted accordingly. New call centers will be billed an install fee based on the level of effort.
Due to instability challenges with the current Call Recording solution, NDIT has ensured the
new Call Center solution offers call recording capability. The base price of the new Call
Recording capability is the cost of a call center agent and agencies are encouraged to budget at
that rate. NDIT intends to continue to explore options for call recording solutions next
biennium, but the cost will be unknown pending potential future procurements.
NDIT will implement a cellular add-on of $1.00 per line for all AT&T and Verizon cellular lines.
This add-on fee was established to help offset the increased NDIT support time necessary to
activate and maintain lines with the vendors as well as the administrative process to ensure
timely payment on multiple agency accounts.
These are the major changes NDIT will implement for the next biennium. Please review the
detailed rate schedules for specific rate increases. NDIT presented this information May
1st, 2024 during the OMB Essentials meeting. As stated previously, NDIT will schedule
individual agency meetings as well.