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The IT Workforce: Pivoting Toward the Cloud

Arizona Chief Information Officer Morgan Reed discusses his plans for developing a next-generation workforce.

Arizona CIO Morgan Reed
Arizona CIO Morgan Reed says that the lean initiatives already completed — like slashing the timeline for help desk tickets from an average of around 20 days to four hours and making the state’s hiring process largely paperless — have improved morale and outcomes.
David Kidd/e.Republic
Is the approaching public-sector retirement boom a silver tsunami or more of a minor swell? Opinions ran the gamut when we talked to state chief information officers at the annual NASCIO conference in Austin last October.  

As for Arizona, Chief Information Officer Morgan Reed reported a small number of IT retirements in 2017. "We're not, I don't think, any more or less exposed to that risk," he said. But he's busy preparing the workforce to better serve the technology needs of the future. 

"If somebody has knowledge of how they've been doing something four years ago, and that's still their job," he said, "we've probably failed as management and as leaders in not modernizing those systems and improving those processes or training other people to have that knowledge."

On the modernization front, he's making strides toward retraining IT staff that might have been hired for skills that no longer meet the state's needs.

"The server administrators or the mainframe administrators of yesterday, we are actually pivoting and having them become the cloud administrators of tomorrow."

Noelle Knell is the executive editor for e.Republic, responsible for setting the overall direction for e.Republic’s editorial platforms, including Government Technology, Governing, Industry Insider, Emergency Management and the Center for Digital Education. She has been with e.Republic since 2011, and has decades of writing, editing and leadership experience. A California native, Noelle has worked in both state and local government, and is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, with majors in political science and American history.