# Technology

**Published**: 2026-06-30
**Source**: https://gps.press/follow-the-money/technology/
**Author**: Georgia Prisoners' Speak

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The line that nearly tripled2.6×

While correctional-officer vacancies ran near **50%** and facilities fell apart, one budget line did the opposite of shrink: GDC technology spending climbed from **$43 million in 2018 to $114 million in 2025** — up **2.6×**. Most of it does not go where the record says it does. Source: Open Georgia vendor payments, FY2018–2025 (sum of technology-classified vendors).

Eight years of it

## The money over time

$43M
FY18
$39M
FY19
$38M
FY20
$34M
FY21
$45M
FY22
$73M
FY23
$72M
FY24
$114M
FY25

GDC technology-vendor payments per fiscal year (Open Georgia). The surge after 2022 is the part worth following.

Where it goes

## Follow each dollar

Channel 1

### The pass-through

$169Mto the Georgia Technology Authority, FY18–25

The single biggest “technology” line isn’t a private vendor at all — it’s the state paying **its own central IT agency**, the Georgia Technology Authority, which adds a fee and routes the work to private contractors (**NTT DATA, Capgemini, AT&T, Atos, Unisys, Xerox**). So the dollar reaches private IT firms **one step removed from the record** — the public payment names a state agency, not the company that actually did the work.

Sources: Open Georgia; GTA published vendor list; state ACFR (GTA internal-service fund).

Channel 2

### The surveillance complex

$20Mto LEO Technologies, FY18–25

The corrections-specific money funds surveillance. **LEO Technologies** sells AI that transcribes and keyword-flags incarcerated people’s phone calls (“Verus”) — **founded by a pardoned felon, run by a former state-corrections secretary**. **Securus** (Platinum Equity) runs the telecom under a commission model the **FCC moved to ban in 2024**. **ALSCAN** and others build the cameras and access control. The technology budget is, increasingly, a watching budget.

Sources: Open Georgia; Reuters / The Intercept on LEO/Verus; FCC 2024 prison-calling order.

Channel 3

### The resellers that hide the maker

$27Mto Carahsoft, FY18–25

Much of the rest disappears into **resellers** that mask the real manufacturer. **Carahsoft** — which paid a $75.5M False Claims Act settlement and had its HQ **raided by the FBI in 2024** — and a brand-new $21.6M hardware reseller appear in the records where the actual software and equipment vendors should be named. You can see the dollar leave; you can’t see what it bought or who ultimately made it.

Sources: Open Georgia; DOJ on the Carahsoft/VMware settlement and the 2024 raid.

Channel 4

### The money that flows two ways

And the appropriation data only shows half of it. Incarcerated people’s families pay **Securus** and others **directly** for calls and tablets — and the vendor pays a commission back to the state: in Georgia, 59.6% of every family phone dollar, roughly **$8 million a year** flowing back to GDC. That family-billed money **barely appears in the public spending record at all**. The cheapest place to hide a prison budget is on the families’ phone bills.

Sources: GDC offender-communications revenue-share records, obtained via the Georgia Procurement Registry (searchable in our data tool); FCC 2024 order (commission model).

[Query the raw procurement data →](/follow-the-money/data/)[How we verify →](/how-we-verify/)
Zoom out

## The same system, across our data

Every number below comes from GPS’s own databases — click through to the underlying data.

[59.6% of every dollar a family pays for a prison phone call goes back to GDC — about $8M a year in commissions on top of the appropriation GDC revenue-share records (Georgia Procurement Registry) Read the investigation →](/georgias-prison-commissary-extortion/)
[≈50% correctional-officer vacancy rates while the technology line 2.6×’d — the state is buying surveillance, not staff GDC fiscal reports · GPS reporting Read about the staffing crisis →](/decarceration-the-key-to-solving-georgias-prison-staffing-crisis-and-healthcare-burden/)
[52,957 people in GDC custody live under this technology — and their families fund the second stream GDC population report See the statistics →](/gdc-statistics/)
What the state won’t show

## The numbers we can’t see — and why

- Securus’s total Georgia billings to families — the state’s 59.6% commission is in procurement records we obtained, but the vendor’s full take is not.
- What the FY2025 reseller surge — a brand-new $21.6M vendor — actually bought.
- Which GTA pass-through dollars went to which private contractor.

We publish the verified figures and label the gaps. [How we verify →](/how-we-verify/)

## The fastest-growing line in Georgia’s prison budget is the one watching the people inside — and billing their families twice. Ask why.

[Find your legislator](/find-your-legislator/)
[Back to Follow the Money](/follow-the-money/)

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