“I arrived two weeks prior to Hurricane Ian and I happened to run into the stormwater guy. Which is funny because in Arizona, we had — a guy. And in North Carolina, there’s 90 people, right?” Wittenburg said, chuckling. “That was not in the job brochure.”
He brought with him a skill set matured in the realization that weather aside, municipal IT is built by peers confronting the same obstacles regardless of locale. He recommends leaning into relationship building.
“We’re all tackling the same challenges in our communities.”
Under his guidance, Raleigh leaders are replacing a legacy enterprise resource planning system. They’re also working with NVIDIA, Esri and Microsoft to develop video as a service — with AI to describe what’s happening. A project envisioned to count vehicles in intersections has evolved to improving signal timing, Wittenburg said, and identifying near-miss accidents, stalled vehicles and objects in the road. It may next turn to law enforcement and drones as first responders, and to asset and service oversight.
“Being able to take all that information and then move that information into a service management system is really
The city has also been working with ServiceNow around agentic AI, to move what it learns via a visual learning model into a ticketing system to track the work and, later, roll it into voice. Currently, help desk agents are using the technology to write notes on tickets — saving time and improving documentation and resolution.
“To me, in order to get to the top, which is being innovative, you have to have that foundational piece,” Wittenburg said. “And once you’ve got that foundation, now you can start to hit these higher levels that are adding more community value.”
