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In addition to upskilling and transforming their workforce, IT leaders in government are investing in enterprise technology that can scale for the future.
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For the past three years, Connecticut IT has been consolidating. Their approach is slow and methodical, and that’s on purpose. In what can be a highly disruptive process, the consolidation effort is centered around making sure the workforce is looked after. “We’re really focused on our employees, creating more opportunities for them to grow, to build their skills, to be flexible in how we deploy them across the organization,” explained CIO Mark Raymond.
Raymond cites nine words that encapsulate their behavior-focused approach to this consolidation. They resonate as principles that could apply to any organization tackling transformation of its own: “Be one team. Own the outcome. Make it better.”
In New Hampshire, CISO Ken Weeks has one of the smallest staffing footprints of his peers around the country, with just five people — a count that includes himself and his deputy CISO. It makes sense, then, that taking care of those people contributes mightily to organizational stability. For Weeks, as with many other state technology leaders, that looks like dollars for upskilling and training in the latest cybersecurity tools.
“Quite honestly, it’s a great retention tool because they love the training,” Weeks said. “I can’t pay them more, I can’t give them more time off, but you’d think that I doubled their salary with how happy they are by getting some training.”
Alongside their major focus on workforce development, technology leaders in government are working to evolve their organizations in a way that best prepares them for future challenges, known and unknown.
For Washington, D.C., Chief Technology Officer Steven Miller, that means investing in technology that can be used across the enterprise, chipping away at the shadow IT that tends to crop up in large organizations.
“We want agencies to adopt what we can support, what we can secure, what we’re prepared to invest in ourselves,” Miller said.
An important part of this effort is establishing and building close partnerships between central IT and district agencies, as well as between the agencies and trusted vendors that they work with. This team mentality helps when the inevitable issue arises — everyone shares a commitment to navigating it successfully.
“It’s been a slow climb,” Miller added, “but now we have a lot of trusted partners that are helping us to move forward on that enterprise side, which is great.”
Future-proofing can mean the IT jobs themselves change quite a bit too. GT has covered the rise of dedicated AI advisers in the last year or so, and many agencies have added accessibility leaders too. In the past few years, chief data and privacy officers have also grown in number.
One of the new positions in the Maryland Department of Information Technology is occupied by Melissa Leaman, the agency’s deputy secretary and chief operating officer. She’s joined by chief data and privacy officers, a senior adviser for responsible AI and a state chief digital experience officer. Two new chief technology officers oversee distinct domains in infrastructure, and platform and client services.
This growth reflects the agency’s evolving priorities, which are further supported by a planned build-out of the digital services team.
“We have historically not had higher-level subject matter experts in-house, like engineers, solution architects, designers, user experience, product managers, things like that,” Leaman explained. “It will definitely be a game-changer for the agencies who are heavily reliant on vendors.”
As these examples demonstrate, getting ready for what comes next looks different depending on geography, leadership priorities and specific organizational realities. But knowing that these leaders are focused on leaving things better than they found them suggests they’re pointed in the right direction.
This story originally appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of Government Technology magazine. Click here to view the full digital edition online.
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