Parikh was hired in July 2018 to be COO as well as the state’s chief data and privacy officer.
In an email to Government Technology on Wednesday, NJOIT spokeswoman Julie Veffer confirmed that Parikh had stepped down, and added that the role of privacy officer has gone to Christine Campbell, the agency’s deputy CTO for legal, compliance and privacy.
Before she was in charge of building and improving New Jersey’s privacy program, ensuring compliance of the state’s technology with privacy and security standards, and overseeing data management, Parikh worked in the private sector as senior counsel for global privacy and data security for the Wyndham Hotel Group.
She talked to Government Technology last year about transparency initiatives to tell residents what the government was doing with their data, at the direction of Gov. Phil Murphy, who took office in January 2018.
Murphy’s choice to lead NJOIT, Chief Technology Officer Christopher Rein, is still in place. In a public statement upon his hiring, Rein said he would focus on making sure New Jersey could accommodate innovation, access and service delivery. More recently, Rein told Government Technology in January about modernizing legacy systems, upgrading infrastructure, and maintaining a balance between innovation and pragmatism.
The state of New Jersey has launched several forward-thinking technology initiatives over the past three months, from passing legislation to mandate fingerprint-activated guns, to emergency preparedness training for county election officials, to investing $10 million to explore shared service agreements and agency consolidations.
