Fulk was tapped for this role for his ability to see things differently, he said. This includes how quickly technology initiatives can be completed. He operates on a 3-6-9-12 month time frame: He believes projects should be completed in a matter of quarters rather than years.
His experience has demonstrated that technology is the same across government and industry, he said. Innovation starts with understanding a business need to serve constituents or customers. Across technology implementations, Fulk focuses on the return on investment, which he underlined is not always financial, especially in government. Other returns include serving customers better, more efficiently or more affordably.
His office’s AI implementations — from chatbots to AI-assisted notary education to unlocking terabytes of state records with its Captain Record project — have delivered significant returns, in some cases reducing employee workloads by 40 to 60 percent. And time saved through automation makes staff more available to directly serve residents.
Looking ahead, more automation is coming, including agentic AI. As Fulk’s office builds more AI-powered processes, he underlined that the AI architecture and infrastructure must be in place so these tools can work together.
A CIO’s role, Fulk said, is to lead on strategy, innovation and process improvement — and serve as the “glue” between technology and business.
Broader modernization initiatives, like his forays into AI, are a direct response to organizational business needs, such as addressing technical debt and the limitations of legacy IT. But even with those, Fulk’s goal is to enable incremental deployments and iterative processes so that government can “always be delivering.”
“Success begets success,” he said.
