A challenging transition for new state CIOs

The new year means several governors have been sworn in to lead their states, either incumbents who won reelection or newcomers to the office. Tech leadership in some state governments is changing too.

Outgoing Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb announced that Chief Information Officer Tracy Barnes would resign ahead of Mike Braun taking office. Meanwhile, Kentucky CIO Ruth Day resigned at the end of last year, after five years in the position. North Carolina CIO Jim Weaver retired last year, while Tennessee CIO Stephanie Dedmon will leave her post in July. Dan Cronin started as Oklahoma’s new CIO this year, after Joe McIntosh resigned amid an ethics issue.

Turnover is nothing new in this position: The National Association of State Chief Information Officers estimated in 2019 that the average tenure of a state CIO is just over two years. But the onus is on newcomers to hit the ground running, quickly get up to speed on their states’ technology initiatives, their role and what they can do next. The first few weeks on the job leading thousands of employees and vendor contracts can be a blur.

“I followed a three-step recipe: listen, learn and lead,” Chris Estes, a former North Carolina CIO who is now U.S. state, local and education market, finance, operations and technology leader at EY, said of his early days in government. “I spent the first 30 days listening and learning about what was working, what wasn't working, what we needed to make different. Then it was about creating that road map on what we were going to do differently.”

Numerous organizations already offer help for new CIOs in their first 100 days on the job, in both the private and public sector. But the nature of the state CIO’s job has evolved in recent years, beyond that of a technologist whose main concern was building out a state’s infrastructure. Now, given the enhanced role of outside vendors and the need to collaborate across agencies, they act as a broker of services and a strategic planner.

Rob Breakiron, managing director within the CIO Advisory sector of professional services network KPMG, said past CIOs needed to just be a “trusted operator” who could be relied on to keep technology working. Now, he said, they also can act as a “strategic business orchestrator,” as well as a “trusted agent” who provides expertise and assistance, including in areas like disaster recovery.

“We're seeing a shift in those types of personas that are taking on that CIO role,” Breakiron said. “Historically it used to come from that trusted operator, who will keep the lights on. But a lot of times those folks failed in that strategic business transformation. You don't want to learn two of those when you get the job as the CIO.”

And that desire to not just be a technologist could partly be why more outsiders are coming into the state CIO role from the private sector. Cronin, for example, was most recently global vice president of engineering for the Marriott International hotel group.

But it can be a major culture shock for those moving from the private sector, especially as they are used to things moving quicker in industry and not having to parse through as much bureaucracy and rules. It means navigating what Doug Robinson, NASCIO’s executive director, called a “complex state government pirate map,” which may be doable for someone already in the organization but tough for an outsider.

“That's very different from someone that's coming in from the private sector, who may have unmanaged expectations of what they can get done in the first 100 days,” Robinson said.

It is incumbent, then, on the new CIO to do “reconnaissance” and learn everything they can about the role, its requirements, its limitations and how it fits within the rest of state government, Robinson said. Much of that is contained within the statute that established the CIO’s office. They also need to meet with other agencies that may rely on their office for tech support and strategy, depending on how the state is structured.

A new CIO must also work out how to fit their agenda with their governor’s. And they need to understand the workforce at their disposal, both in-house and at the various vendors that contract with the state.

“Rarely do we run into an IT organization, specifically on the government side, that would say they're well-staffed or over-staffed,” Breakiron said. “Recognizing that there's likely an understaffing or a misalignment of staffing, you've got to understand who your people are.”

Then, it’s up to the new CIO to work out what they want to accomplish within the parameters of their role. That means strategizing about what they want to do and how they will get it done within the government. Some may come in with a “big transformation agenda,” Breakiron said, but they can get “stalled relatively quickly based on the size, scale and complexity of government.”

“Are you there to fix something? Are you there to keep something running? Are you there to transform and completely shake it up?” he said. “Rarely is it all three of those.”

NASCIO also offers plenty of support for new CIOs, Robinson said. That includes workshops that provide on-the-ground insights and learnings from those already in office.

The budget process can also present an early test for a new CIO. The start of the year means the start of the new legislative session in many states, and the need to navigate relationships with lawmakers who may not always be sympathetic to funding technology.

Estes said he once spent time in a lawmaker’s office explaining how he needed to replace 40,000 desktop computers, and that it would take 18 months to do so given the state’s procurement rules and the sheer scale of the task.

That lawmaker thought it could be done quicker, but Estes said once he explained that the line of computers that needed replacing would be eight miles long — the distance from the General Assembly building to the airport in Raleigh — the elected official relented.

“The secret to communicating and building relationships with lawmakers is trying to put information in a way that they can digest it,” Estes said. “Understanding your audience, knowing what their competencies are and communicating in a way that they can digest information is an important part of the role.”

Then all those plans and strategies can go out the window when a crisis occurs. Sometimes it can be technological, like a cyberattack or an outage that requires the CIO’s direct involvement. But other times physical crises can have an equally significant impact. Estes recalled a fire in the state’s Department of Administration building in one of the broom closets that had been converted to hold state servers. It had to be put out by a quick-thinking police officer and led to a $60 million project to expand the state’s data centers and rely less on broom closets.

“That's the role of a state CIO,” Estes said. “You never know where it's going to quite go. You wake up one morning and you deal with the crisis that's at hand.”