Jennifer Lorenz, executive deputy chief information officer for the New York Office of Information Technology Services, will depart state service this summer, according to Scott Reif, the agency’s chief communications officer.
A specific date has yet to be set, Reif said, adding that Lorenz’s leaving is entirely her decision, as she wants to pursue other interests. The agency intends to hire a replacement for Lorenz, he said.
Lorenz could not be reached for comment.
She has been with Information Technology Services, or ITS, since the debut of that agency in 2012, and has worked as executive deputy CIO under two chief information officers. She also served as acting CIO between the tenures of Tony Riddick and current CIO Dru Rai.
ITS supports thousands of applications and more than 130,000 employee accounts across 57 state agencies. Earlier this year, in a sign of how state government is viewing technology, the agency appointed New York’s first chief artificial intelligence officer.
During Lorenz’s time at ITS, the agency expanded its workforce and improved customer service for client agencies. She led the state’s response to the 2024 CrowdStrike outage and has also helped to build the Joint Security Operations Center (JSOC) in Brooklyn.
Lorenz has more than two decades of experience in leading and managing information technology systems, and in her current job oversees all operations for ITS. She previously led the ITS Chief Portfolio Office and is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force.
More recently, she spoke with Government Technology at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers Midyear Conference a few weeks ago.
She discussed the state’s demand for experienced technology workers, especially as artificial intelligence gains more use among public agencies.
“Prompt engineering is something we’re seeing a need for,” she said at the time. “The way you conduct a search with AI, the more context you can give it the better the results will be — granted, the data that’s pulling has to be accurate.”
