Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez told the Commissioner's Court during preliminary budget hearings on Aug. 13 that the Sheriff's Technology and Professional Services unit needs additional staff to provide round‑the‑clock frontline IT support for deputies and jail operations. The office requested one customer service support manager and four customer support analysts to enable 24/7 coverage for systems the county’s central IT unit does not physically service, including body‑worn cameras (Axon), booking/fingerprint systems (LiveScan), in‑car and mobile reporting systems (Tiburon/RMS/JMS), cell‑phone apps used by deputies, license plate readers and jail video systems.

Sheriff Hernandez and Deputy Chief Amy Ibarra said TCSO has two customer support analysts currently; those two posts reduced ticket turnaround times significantly but the number of help‑desk tickets has continued to rise — from 377 in 2023 to an expected 790 in 2025 — and increasingly occurs overnight, on weekends and holidays. The sheriff’s office asked that Planning & Budget fund the manager plus the four analysts; PBO recommended the manager position but did not fund the four requested analysts in the preliminary budget. The unfunded portion was roughly $375,272 as presented.

Sheriff's staff explained that central IT primarily maintains back‑end infrastructure and cannot provide the physical, site‑level troubleshooting that the sheriff needs at remote substations, jails, and during overnight incidents. Hernandez described incidents in which TCSO IT staff had to travel to multiple sites to remove a problematic update after a cybersecurity incident to restore operations, and warned that when equipment such as LiveScan (fingerprinting) or body cameras are down the sheriff's core functions — booking, identification checks and evidence capture — can be delayed or impaired.

Commissioners asked whether contract workers could provide the frontline service; sheriff staff said the requested roles require institutional knowledge of sheriff systems and immediate onsite response that contractors are ill suited to provide. Commissioners also asked PBO to note the request on the budget agenda worksheet for markup; the sheriff’s office noted it will supply breakdowns of ticket types to show the composition of after‑hours problems.

The court did not take a vote on the request Aug. 13; staff said it will appear in the budget agenda worksheet for the court's markup discussions on Aug. 26 and subsequent budget sessions.