Overview
Columbus is Ohio's capital and largest city, with roughly 910,000 residents, and central IT runs through the Department of Technology (DoT), which supports city departments, two data centers, and tens of thousands of endpoints.
The account is defined right now by recovery: in July 2024 the city was hit by a Rhysida ransomware attack that forced a full systems shutdown, exposed the personal data of roughly half a million residents and employees (including crime victims and undercover officers), and left some systems offline for months. The aftermath has reframed DoT's agenda around cybersecurity, network segmentation, zero trust, and resilient infrastructure rather than greenfield smart-city work.
Leadership is also in transition — long-tenured CIO Sam Orth retired in mid-2026, with Deputy Director Pam O'Grady serving as interim director while Mayor Andrew Ginther's office searches for a permanent successor. For a Dell SLG seller, Columbus is a large municipal account in active rebuild mode, where security-hardened infrastructure, endpoint, backup/recovery, and modernization carry unusual weight.
How this account buys
- DoT is the technology buying center — Interim Director Pam O'Grady now leads it while the mayor's office searches for a permanent successor
- The Council-approved $23M zero-trust program is the funded anchor initiative shaping near-term buys, with security as the front door
- Columbus Purchasing Office (Finance and Management) runs city solicitations and vendor onboarding; City Council sits behind budget adoption and major contract approvals
- Fastest compliant path: Ohio DAS State Term Schedules / Cooperative Purchasing Program via OhioBuys, alongside direct city RFPs through Purchasing
Where Dell Can Play
- Lead with security-hardened infrastructure, endpoint, and identity tied directly to the funded zero-trust program — frame around segmentation and 'never trust, always verify.'
- Position resilient backup/recovery and data-center architecture against the lessons of the 2024 whole-system shutdown — recoverability is the proven pain point.
- Engage the interim DoT director and the mayor's office now, and track the permanent-CIO search so you're aligned with incoming leadership's priorities.
- Confirm Dell's standing on Columbus Purchasing Office, Ohio DAS/State Term Schedule, and Ohio Cooperative Purchasing vehicles to shorten the path to award.
- Map the DoT security/CISO buying center and tie proposals to Ohio's local-government cybersecurity-program mandate as an additional compliance driver.
Budget & Fiscal
Columbus is a large municipal spender whose IT priorities have shifted decisively toward security and resilience since the 2024 attack. The clearest public signal is the $23M zero-trust network program City Council approved in 2025, layered on top of the city's annual operating budget and DoT's ongoing operations.
$23M
Zero-trust program
Council-approved (2025) multi-year build; ~2+ years, touches 20K+ devices across two data centers
~910K
Population served
Largest city in Ohio; scale drives endpoint, identity, and infrastructure footprint
~500K
People notified
Residents/employees whose data was exposed in the July 2024 breach
- The city is funding 24 months of Experian credit monitoring for affected individuals — a recurring cost tied to the breach response.
- Exact DoT line-item appropriations sit inside the City of Columbus operating budget (Finance and Management); confirm current-year figures before forecasting.
- Ohio has moved to require local governments to stand up cybersecurity programs, which adds a compliance driver on top of Columbus's own recovery spend.
Initiatives & Priorities
Zero-trust network rollout
Council-approved ~$23M program to implement a 'never trust, always verify' architecture across 20,000+ devices and the city's two data centers, with network segmentation to prevent another whole-system shutdown. Multi-year build — the anchor modernization motion.
Cybersecurity Zero Trust ModernizationPost-ransomware resilience & recovery
Hardening backup/recovery, identity, and incident response after the Rhysida attack. Resilient, recoverable infrastructure and segmented architecture are the practical lessons the city is now buying against.
Resilience Backup/Recovery CybersecurityInfrastructure & data-center modernization
Ongoing refresh of compute, storage, and data-center capacity supporting city services — an area DoT has invested in over recent years and that recovery work is accelerating.
Data Center InfrastructureSmart city, data & AI services
Building on the Smart Columbus legacy — data analytics/integration, a 311 platform, traffic optimization, and emerging AI uses — though these now sit behind security and resilience in priority.
Smart City AI DataProcurement
Columbus buys through its own Purchasing Office and can also leverage State of Ohio and cooperative vehicles. Confirm Dell's standing on the relevant city, state, and co-op contracts before pursuing a deal.
| Vehicle / gate | What it means for Dell |
|---|---|
| Columbus Purchasing Office | The city's central acquisition office and bids/solicitations channel (Finance and Management); vendors register via the city's Vendor Services portal and respond to city bids/RFPs. |
| State of Ohio DAS contracts / State Term Schedules | Ohio Department of Administrative Services (DAS) statewide contracts and State Term Schedules (STS), surfaced through OhioBuys — pre-negotiated state pricing local governments can use. |
| Ohio Cooperative Purchasing Program | Free, perpetual membership letting political subdivisions buy off established State of Ohio contracts without running their own solicitation — a fast path for IT goods and services. |
Spend Signals
GovSpend · as of Sep 21, 2026Dell vs. competitors (spend, payee)
Brand footprint — all channels (est.)
Higher of two conservative lenses: product-name match · manufacturer tag. Both undercount — treat as floors.
Top IT categories
$11.4MInformation Technology Broadcasting and Telecommunications
$5.9MNetwork security and VPN equipment/software
$3.8MSoftware maintenance and support
$3.4MNetwork switches
$3.2MFinance/accounting/ERP software
$2.6MComputer software licensing rental or leasing
Open bids / RFPs
| Solicitation | Due |
|---|---|
| Cabling Hardware and Services UTC City of Columbus | Sep 21, 2026 |
| Cybersecurity Evaluation and Enhancements City of Columbus | Sep 22, 2026 |
| Technology Uplinx VoiP Software Renewal City of Columbus | Sep 22, 2026 |
| iPad A16 w/ cellular capability City of Columbus | Sep 24, 2026 |
| Police - Multi Function Device City of Columbus | Sep 25, 2026 |
| DOT/COC/Red Sky Subscription for Cisco Webex soft phone City of Columbus | Oct 7, 2026 |
- Fiscal basis: City of Columbus budgets on a calendar year (confirmed via GovSpend's Organization.FiscalYear field and the city's ACFR); window is CY2023–2025 (2023-01-01 to 2025-12-31). Parent agency record (6952) is well populated (546K+ PO records), so no department/utility aggregation was needed.
- categories reflects only the known-IT-vendor subset of spend (same population as vendorSpend) — the unrestricted LineItem.Category taxonomy is dominated by non-IT UNSPSC buckets (construction, insurance, engineering) and isn't a usable IT-commodity breakdown on its own.
- dellFootprint is omitted: genuine Dell-brand product matches (Dell Marketing direct + CDWG VxRail/docking-station line items) total only ~$918K against a $6.14M Dell Marketing payee figure — most of that payee total is Microsoft licensing and other non-Dell-branded items resold through Dell, the same pattern seen in Harris County and at Cincinnati/DAS in this batch.
- Excluded as false positives (confirmed by sampling line-item text): Key Cleaning Connection ($1.24M), Vernon Dell Tractor + Vernon Dell Tractor Sales (net ~$63K, tractor dealer), Blue Apple Technologies ($424K, a Splunk-support reseller, not Apple), Apple Smith/Apple Farm Services/Adaptive Sports Connection/Coliseum Home Improvements ('Apple Street' address) — all name collisions. The single largest dellFootprint false positive was Brown Enterprise Solutions ($17.35M, a Microsoft Enterprise-license reseller) plus Tony R Wells Foundation ($530K, an unrelated ARPA rental-assistance treasury reallocation); both excluded.
- expiringContracts is omitted — re-checked 2026-08-05–2027-02-28: all 128 GovSpend contract records for Columbus in this window remain $0-valued small RFQ-closing line items (traffic cones, ammunition, soccer nets, bottled water), including a handful of IT-adjacent ones (Dell Connectrix maintenance, cabling supplies, hard drives) that are still RFQ-closing entries rather than substantive multi-year technology contracts, consistent with the prior pass.
- openBids above is a live-pipeline refresh (window: dueDate 2026-08-10 or later) — City of Columbus runs procurement on a calendar-year cycle, so this panel turns over frequently; three bids listed in an earlier pass (Police Interactive Whiteboard, Police Multi Function Printer, Police Docking Stations) closed 2026-08-05–2026-08-06 and were replaced here with newly-checked open items.
- Bid and contract panels refreshed 2026-09-21 from GovSpend (agencyId 6952): 6 open bids due on or after 2026-09-21 and 0 contracts ending on or after 2026-10-05 (two-week runway), IT-relevant only. Contracts still omitted: all 25 IT-tagged records ending in the window are $0 RFQ-closing line items (e.g. LTO-6 tapes, a claims copier), not substantive technology contracts.
Power Structure
| Decision-maker | Why they matter |
|---|---|
| Andrew Ginther Mayor, City of Columbus | Executive sponsor; his office owns the search for a permanent DoT director and sets the post-attack recovery agenda. |
| Pam O'Grady Director, Department of Technology | Deputy Director who officially took over as interim DoT head on June 27, 2026 after Sam Orth's June 21 retirement; the current top IT relationship. Comes from a planning/governance and government-affairs background with limited hands-on IT experience per public reporting — watch for a permanent director hire. |
| Sam Orth Former CIO / DoT Director (retired June 2026) | Led DoT from 2016 until retiring June 21, 2026; staying on in an advisory capacity through year-end — institutional context on prior strategy and the breach response. |
| DoT cybersecurity / CISO function Security leadership | Owns zero trust, segmentation, and incident response; confirm the current CISO/security lead by name before engaging the security buying center. |
| Columbus Purchasing Office Procurement (Finance and Management) | Owns city solicitations and vendor onboarding — the contractual path for any DoT purchase. |
News & Signals
Sep 2026
Columbus Dept of Technology Veeam Data Platform renewal introduced at Council — $152,950 via reseller Brown Enterprise Solutions
Ordinance 2483-2026, read for the first time at the Sept. 14, 2026 Council meeting and published in City Bulletin #38, would authorize the Director of the Department of Technology to renew a Veeam Data Platform Advance Universal subscription through reseller Brown Enterprise Solutions, LLC for $152,950 from the Information Services operating fund. It confirms Columbus is standardizing its post-ransomware backup and data-protection stack on Veeam, a direct competitive data point against Dell's PowerProtect/Data Domain portfolio. A Dell SLG seller should note the incumbent platform, the modest renewal size, and the renewal cadence when positioning backup, cyber-recovery, and immutable-storage alternatives.
Sep 2026
Columbus Council outlines data-center policy package targeting high-volume water rates, not a ban
Columbus City Council leaders — Council President Shannon Hardin and Councilmember Christopher Wyche, who chaired the Public Utilities and Sustainability Committee hearing — outlined a proposed policy package on Sept. 16, 2026 addressing the rapid expansion of central-Ohio data centers, centered on new rates and fees for high-load, high-volume water users plus efficiency measures and electronics-disposal rules. Hardin described competing community pressure between residents who did not want the conversation at all and those who wanted data centers banned outright, so the city is shaping rather than blocking hyperscale growth. A Dell SLG seller should track the ordinance's water-cost and efficiency requirements as context for regional AI/data-center demand and position efficient, right-sized infrastructure accordingly.
Aug 2026
Columbus PD restores online crime-report portal on modern platform, two years after the ransomware attack
Columbus Police brought back its public online crime-reporting portal — including an interactive map searchable to the block level with data export — nearly two years after the July 2024 Rhysida attack took the service down. Officials said they rebuilt on a modern interface rather than simply restoring the old, older-technology tool. For a Dell SLG seller, this is concrete evidence that post-breach application/data modernization and rebuild work is still active across DoT, signaling ongoing demand for infrastructure, data platform, and app-modernization investment.
Jun 2026
Nearly two years on, city still hasn't released a full breach report; eight DoT staff have departed since the attack
Persistent transparency and accountability pressure keeps cyber resilience politically charged — a tailwind for defensible, well-documented security investments as new leadership settles in.
Jun 2026
DoT Director Sam Orth retires June 21; Deputy Director Pam O'Grady becomes interim director June 27
Leadership transition at the top of city IT — the relationship map shifts to the interim director and the mayor's search for a permanent CIO/director; Orth stays on advisory through year-end.
Jul 2025
Columbus City Council approves ~$23M zero-trust network program
A funded, multi-year security modernization commitment touching 20K+ devices — the anchor opportunity for security-hardened infrastructure.
Nov 2024
City confirms Rhysida ransomware breach exposed data of ~500,000 people
Established the scale of the incident and drove the pivot to zero trust, segmentation, and recovery spending.
Sources
- City of Columbus — Department of Technology
- City of Columbus — Purchasing Office
- GovTech — After Nearly a Decade, Columbus CIO Sam Orth to Retire
- WOSU — Columbus IT director retiring nearly two years after major cyber attack (June 2026)
- 10TV — Nearly 2 years after cyberattack, Columbus still has not released full report
- WOSU — Columbus to invest $23M in zero-trust network
- Cybersecurity Dive — Columbus ransomware attack compromised data of 500K
- WOSU — One year later, little accountability after ransomware attack
- Ohio Procurement — Cooperative Purchasing Program
- ABC6/WSYX — Columbus police restore online crime report portal two years after cyberattack
- ABC6 (WSYX) — Columbus City Council to update residents on proposed data center legislation Wednesday
- City of Columbus — City Bulletin #38, September 19, 2026