In San Diego, 98% of Tech Staff Say AI Saves Time, Boosts Accuracy

The structure of public-sector IT is changing. Faced with tight budgets, an urgent need to ramp up artificial intelligence, and ever-present concerns around cybersecurity, state and local IT leaders are re-evaluating their skills mix.

In the realm of nuts and bolts, the move to cloud and software as a service is reshaping the IT organization. “You had a whole cadre of mainframe developers and mainframe system admins, and now your mainframe is virtual. That’s been a big shift,” said National Association of State Chief Information Officers Executive Director Doug Robinson. Add to this a growing emphasis on enterprise-scale solutions and the rapid emergence of AI. All that together impacts how IT is organized.

At a higher level, “the major evolution is the move from the CIO being a technology expert — a boxes-and-wires, green-blinking-lights kind of person — to being someone who leads change in the organization,” Robinson said. As change agents, CIOs are looking to align their organizational structures with both the emerging technology tools and the practical needs within their jurisdictions.

To understand how that’s done and where things are headed, GovTech convened a virtual roundtable of city and county IT leaders. Here we interview Jonathan Behnke, CIO of San Diego, a city with a population of 1.4 million. Read the other four CIOs’ responses here:

• Laurel Caldwell, CIO, Latah County, Idaho
• Scott Furman, CIO, Chesterfield County, Va.
• Chris Seidt, CIO, Louisville, Ky.
• Markell Storay, CIO, Charlotte, N.C.

Give me a rough breakdown of your IT organization today. How do you think that will change?
Johnathan Behnke: In-house, we’ve got about 90 IT team members and then managed services are doing the rest of the work. Enterprise resource planning has about 26 people — we have a huge ERP footprint. We have three or four people on workplace services, managing the 15,000 devices and service desk support. I have a three-person contracts team that is insanely busy. We are seeing greater demands on cybersecurity, IT governance, data governance and cloud. I see those continuing to grow. And the world of application development is changing rapidly.

What role(s) in your org do you think have the most potential for change in the coming years?
Behnke: Cybersecurity roles will need to continue evolving, with the explosion of AI across the tech ecosystem. Traditional web development may see the greatest impact as AI changes how the end-user community searches and consumes requested data. Cloud, enterprise compute, development functions — those roles will change. Automation will have a big impact on traditional help desk and support services in the next couple of years. I see those roles being more focused on self-services, automating incident resolution and problem management. Looking 10 years out, quantum computing and post-quantum cryptography will have a big potential to change roles for almost every IT function.

How will AI impact how you hire?
Behnke: AI skills will be important for any IT function. As we hire, we know we’re not getting someone that has 10 years of experience [with AI]. When we think about multiagent systems and how more orchestration skills and management will be required, they’re not going to have five years of experience doing those things. But we want AI skills, we want people that have that background, so they’re not starting from scratch. And we want people with good aptitude for AI, the ones that can pick it up. It will be part of every technology employee’s job moving forward.

What are the drawbacks and benefits of incorporating AI into the IT workforce?
Behnke: One thing we’ve been talking about is the risk that we could inadvertently have a decline in skill sets if we are introducing more AI at the entry-level positions. If more of that work is automated, those entry-level employees aren’t developing the reasoning skills — AI did all the easy things and they don’t know what’s behind all that. On the upside, we polled over 400 employees. Among the technology workers, 98 percent of them reported saving time, improved communications, improved accuracy and better analytics. They’re the ones using the early AI agents to do work, and there’s excitement.

The most recent Digital Cities (2025), Counties (2025) and States (2024) surveys* reported that cybersecurity, compliance auditing, AI modeling and data analytics are the areas with the greatest need for increased IT staffing. Is that true of your organization?
Behnke: That tracks directly with what we are anticipating in the next 12 to 18 months. And we’re certainly seeing some of that already today. The AI modeling and compliance auditing — those two areas are the most underwater right now. And cybersecurity: We have got some very smart folks who are doing very well, but I would mention cybersecurity as well.

*The Digital Cities, Counties and State surveys are conducted by the Center for Digital Government, which is part of e.Republic, Government Technology’s parent company.