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Wyoming Quietly Hires Its First Chief Data Officer

Drew Dilly is the newest member of CIO Gordon Knopp's IT leadership team, serving as the state's first chief data officer. Dilly will evaluate legacy systems to find opportunities for resource sharing and consolidation.

inside a data center
Shutterstock/Timofeev Vladimir
Wyoming’s Department of Enterprise Technology Services (ETS) hired the state’s first chief data officer earlier this year as CIO Gordon Knopp continues to build his IT leadership team.

Drew Dilly assumed his role as Wyoming’s first CDO on Oct. 1 after serving as the Department of Education’s director of technology. Knopp has been actively recruiting his department’s IT leaders since his appointment in February and is currently seeking a state CISO.

“It's a dream job for me,” Dilly said in an email to Government Technology. “I'm a complete data wonk (and I say that in the most respectful way for all my fellow data wonks out there) so the duties and my interests are well aligned.”

Knopp has been evaluating the state’s reliance on legacy systems. He said one of the CDO’s duties would include identifying resources that could be shared or consolidated across government agencies.

Dilly said his other responsibilities are in flux but include enterprise data planning and design, data security, and data privacy, to name a few.

“I have found that since the position of CDO is new to Wyoming, without an airtight definition of the position, people will define the position however they see fit,” he wrote. “We want to be as open and flexible as possible to new challenges and opportunities, yet structured enough to maintain excellence and a focused direction.”

Before his work in civil service, Dilly said he led a stock market data team for Data Transmission Network in Omaha, Neb., and was the director of software engineering for OCI Wyoming, now known as Ciner Wyoming.

Patrick Groves was a staff writer for Government Technology from 2019 to 2020.