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Katrina Flory

CIO, Ohio

Katrina Flory, Ohio CIO
Government Technology/David Kidd
Katrina Flory is looking to her long history with Ohio state government to serve as a guide for developing the state’s technology future. She’s spent almost 30 years in the public sector, including 20 with the Ohio Department of Administrative Services (DAS).

“I take pride in knowing that what we do helps Ohioans and ultimately makes Ohio a better place to live, work and thrive,” said Flory, chief information officer for Ohio. She also serves as assistant director of DAS, where she oversees the Office of Information Technology and sets the IT direction for the state.

“I have had the opportunity to see our statewide information technology services grow and evolve, from the initial ohio.gov web presence to today’s customer-centric and data-driven InnovateOhio Platform,” she added. “I have seen many successes, and also some failures that could have been avoided with stronger relationships and trust building.”

Flory had a leadership role in the state’s now-completed IT optimization effort as well as the ongoing IT innovation initiative, which standardized infrastructure consolidation in areas like storage, network, mainframe and server technologies.

As for what’s next, “we will continue to focus on digital services and innovation, and how we partner with agencies in this journey through the InnovateOhio Platform,” Flory said. “We have done a tremendous amount of work to consolidate agency infrastructure and now need to turn more to standardization and retiring some of our technical debt to reduce complexity while embracing emerging technologies like GenAI.”

This story originally appeared in the May/June 2024 issue of Government Technology magazine. Click here to view the full digital edition online.
Skip Descant writes about smart cities, the Internet of Things, transportation and other areas. He spent more than 12 years reporting for daily newspapers in Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and California. He lives in downtown Yreka, Calif.