City of Cleveland
Crowe first took on the CITO role in an interim capacity in February, becoming permanent later that month. She had been director of the city’s Office of Urban Analytics and Innovation since 2022, although it had a different name at that time.
Her background in data analytics provides the lens through which she views technology work, she said, which involves evaluating and improving the systems that power government operations to shape how users experience those technologies.
The CITO role is responsible for overseeing multiple offices in Cleveland, Crowe said: the Office of IT and Services, the Office of Urban Analytics and Innovation, and 311. She plans to “level up” technology use across these three core areas of city government.
In addition to data analytics, Crowe’s strategic priorities include cybersecurity, application management and AI.
“In the era that we live in, we’re seeing municipal governments get hit more with cyber attacks,” Crowe said. “It is our responsibility to be upright and forward-thinking about our cyber protocol.”
The city has taken on “huge” modernization in this area in recent years, she said, with a 2024 cyber incident serving as a catalyst for those advances.
Officials are also focused on AI and application management, which entails moving on-prem applications into software-as-a-service applications to support a more modern technology experience.
Strategizing on how to effectively leverage AI in government operations comes down to business analytics, too, the CITO said. The city has already undertaken significant work in recent years to support data governance; now, Crowe said, the focus is shifting to enterprise key performance indicators to support the city’s developing AI strategy.
Cleveland is looking to modernize users’ technology experience, Crowe said, both for city government employees and for residents, who access government technology through services like 311.
These priority areas, she said, will set the foundation for the Cleveland government to prepare a “tech-forward government enterprise” for its future.
The technology sector is advancing rapidly, but Crowe credits the city’s mayor for understanding the need to embed technology across government operations in scalable and sustainable ways.
“Our residents want to interact with the government differently than they did 50 years ago,” Crowe said, citing the desire for tools like mobile applications and efficient digital services.
The challenge lies in change management for employees, whom Crowe said have expressed concerns about whether AI may replace jobs. The CITO’s response to that question is that AI is going to change people’s jobs as new technology like computers and cars have done: “If we were still policing via horse and buggy, people would be wildly concerned about how we were approaching the world.”
Rather than taking jobs away, Crowe emphasized that AI will require people to adjust their daily workflows.
The city is exploring AI through three separate categorizations: work assistants, through tools like Microsoft Copilot or Claude; fit-for-purpose data collection, like the City Detect pilot using cameras to detect potential code enforcement violations; and city-trained AI agents.
“I think some of these agents are going to be bread and butter for how we do our work in a couple of years,” she said, underlining that officials will be learning from and with the industry.
Cleveland government employees care deeply about the work they are doing to improve processes and service delivery, Crowe emphasized, and this attitude is supportive of broader technology modernization efforts.
While a lot of work has already been done to modernize, there is still room for more improvements and technology maturation, she said. The goal is to ensure that the city’s technology and processes are able to continue evolving with the tech landscape so that officials are prepared to effectively leverage the next technology — “beyond AI.”
Crowe is, she said, helping ensure the Cleveland government is “braced for the future” of where technology may take the public sector next.
