CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Legislators Monday continued to grill state Chief Technology Officer Kyle Schafer about prospects for outsourcing nearly 600 state information technology jobs -- and Schafer continued to stress that discussions are extremely preliminary.

Schafer told the legislative Joint Committee on Technology that outsourcing is just one option to reduce the state's $35 million annual cost to operate various IT services for state agencies.

He said the state Office of Technology is also looking at an internal centralization of some 13 separate state IT offices.

"We're doing an assessment of what we think the estimated savings will be," he said. "If it would be more cost-effective to centralize, we'll make that recommendation."

Schafer confirmed that in June that IBM is reviewing all of the state's data centers and IT applications, a study that had sparked rumors among IT staffers regarding the possible outsourcing of their jobs.

Last month, about 75 Office of Technology employees rallied outside of their Capitol complex offices to protest any outsourcing plans.

"This whole movement you're undertaking, I know, is making a whole lot of people nervous," Delegate Nancy Guthrie, D-Kanawha, told Schafer.

Schafer said the Manchin administration's policy has been consistent when it comes to any consolidation of state services.

"There's not been any single layoff of any employee with any consolidation we've done," he said. "This is an economic development and jobs creation initiative, not a jobs elimination initiative."

If the state decides to outsource the IT jobs, it will be to bring more private-sector jobs to the state, he said.

"The question is, can we leverage that managed service to attract other jobs to West Virginia?" Schafer said.

He had previously told legislators that if the IT jobs are outsourced, state employees probably wouldn't be laid off, because the winning vendor would be required to "rebadge" state employees as their own.

Office of Technology employees have protested that their benefits as state employees would not transfer to their new private-sector positions.

Guthrie noted that other states have not had success outsourcing their IT operations, citing problems with outsourcing by the states of Virginia and Texas, among other states.

"There are four different lawsuits in four different jurisdictions saying this is a bad idea to outsource," she said.

Schafer said that, while those states have "some service issues they're working on," there have been more successes than failures among states outsourcing their IT operations.

Guthrie also complained that legislators are not being kept fully apprised of the status of the IT transition.

"It's like so much of state government anymore. It's all in your head," she said.

Also Monday, Ken Arndt, southeast region president for Frontier Communications, said the state landline phone service provider will soon have a statewide fiber-optic network in place, connecting assets from the company's previous operations in the state with those acquired from Verizon as part of a 14-state, $8.6 billion acquisition, effective on July 1.

He said Frontier will be able to provide new high-speed Internet connections to 50,000 households in 190 locations around the state within 180 days, and to reach a total of 100,000 new households by 2011.

"We will take West Virginia, which is the 47th least-wired state in the United States, to the top five in five years," he told lawmakers.

Reach Phil Kabler at ph...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1220.