LaVonda Bonnard, a business analyst at a healthcare consulting firm, told us that while the prospect of government work is appealing, it doesn't compare favorably to the private sector when it comes to innovation.
"I get the impression that I can go to Google, throw out an idea and they’ll actually listen to it, and maybe even vet it out and examine it, whereas the government, not so much," Bonnard said.
State chief information officers weren't surprised by government's reputation where innovation is concerned. Utah CIO Mike Hussey pointed to the sloths at the DMV depicted in the movie Zootopia as a commonly held stereotype. But it's one that he and other public-sector technology leaders are actively working against.
"I’d like to think that we’re different," Hussey said. "We look at some of the things that we’re pushing the envelope on and I think we are both working with the private sector and understanding technologies that are coming out, and we’re right up there in lockstep with them."
Delaware CIO James Collins chimed in on the topic too, providing evidence that the state can put what recent graduates in computer science fields have just learned in the classroom to use.
"We're working with some of the most modern technology that's out there, so if you come work with us, you're working with mobile-enabled platforms, you're working with commercial cloud, you're working with infrastructure as code, you're working with the most up-to-date infrastructure from a networking or compute standpoint," he said. "So yeah, we do still have mainframe and other things like that, but we're at the other end of the spectrum as well."