CIO Alberto Gonzalez has been leading Idaho IT since 2022, including heading up the multiyear IT consolidation process. This initiative supports advances in technology, ranging from AI to cybersecurity.
AI has been a key technology focus in the state this year, Gonzalez said, both in terms of governance and implementation. While state government was seeing increased demand for the technology but lacked rules yet in place, officials within the Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) created a framework in months to enable its safe advancement, along with resources and training for employees. Now, he said, the state has several use cases underway that are already driving productivity gains.
The state is using AI to support the experience Idahoans have interacting with the government — and make it more efficient.
One such case Gonzalez highlighted is in child welfare. Staffers were spending a significant amount of time reviewing cases to make a recommendation for the children they serve. A language model — built in a way that ensures data protection — was able to reduce that time dramatically: “What used to take four-and-a-half to six hours is literally taking less than a minute.”
AI also appears within the Idaho Transportation Department’s Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The DMV administrator — Lisa McClellan, who serves in a role previously held by Gonzalez — is working to automate the data entry process with AI to save time and improve the accuracy of transcribing handwritten documents. Elsewhere, DMV’s onboarding tool leverages its standard operating procedures as well as state- and agency-specific rules to assist in onboarding new employees and address high turnover. Here, too, the process goes faster, the CIO said: “What used to take months is now weeks.”
The ITS Application Development team recently launched an AI Lunch and Learn series to support AI literacy, and he noted that individual employees are beginning to use the technology for productivity. Raising awareness and highlighting current government AI uses may, Gonzalez said, increase demand for education-focused initiatives like this.
AI is tied to another area of focus for the state, Gonzalez said: privacy. Taylor Bothke was tapped in 2024 to serve in the dual role of ITS privacy officer and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) program manager; the two roles intersect at the shared goal of protecting individual rights, she said previously.
“AI has allowed us to make privacy sexy again,” Gonzalez said of the revived emphasis on this work. AI, privacy and ADA compliance will be key focuses for the state in 2026, according to the CIO.
Citizen engagement will be another area of concentration. Officials have been updating state websites to modernize the experience, and are underway on finalizing the main site, Idaho.gov. The refreshed site is expected to go live in January, he said. In addition, officials are introducing AI chatbots as a priority for state websites, trained on applicable government information, to support user navigation.
Cybersecurity, too, will remain key in 2026. During the 2025 Cyber Discovery event — which empowers state employees to practice cyber defense in a controlled, yet real environment — participants were able to actually stop foreign actors. This year was the first the state beat the National Guard in this exercise — and in 2026, Gonzalez said he hopes to do so by larger margins.
A unique component of the state’s cybersecurity strategy is Operation Cyber Idaho. Through this initiative, the state is placing interns and apprentices with cybersecurity expertise in counties, cities and school districts that can use state government tools.
“We’re just really excited about the approach we’re taking, because we see the benefit to the cities and counties and school districts and tribes that we’re supporting,” Gonzalez said of the interns. The other benefit, he noted, is that the program strengthens the cyber talent base within the state and provides job opportunities to people in rural areas.
Behind the scenes, steady progress continues on the IT consolidation project. By June, Gonzalez said the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare will mark the final agency being consolidated: “And then we’ll be done.”
