South Dakota’s New CIO Takes Mission-Focused Approach to IT

As South Dakota's new CIO, Mark Wixon's top priority is fostering supportive partnerships with the other internal state agencies, partnerships that help them improve their work and reach their own goals.

Wixon was appointed CIO and commissioner of the Bureau of Information and Technology (BIT) in May following the departure of former CIO Madhu Gottumukkala. In South Dakota, the role of BIT commissioner encompasses both typical CIO duties and those of a chief digital officer.

Wixon’s primary priority in this role is building strong partnerships with state agencies in order to elevate their service levels, he said.

“And really, what this gets back to is BIT’s role in fulfilling our mission, which is helping the agencies leverage technology to fill their mission,” he said. "So, our success is their success.”

Wixon has more than three decades of experience in IT, and he most recently served as the director of agency application support within BIT. In that role, he became familiar with the technology that the government is currently using, the structure of BIT, and the differences between state government IT and the private sector, where Wixon spent the majority of his career. The familiarization with state government, and specifically that of South Dakota, provided Wixon with a foundational understanding of the financial model at work and how technology can support state government plans.

The challenges of communicating the value of new technology and building buy-in are not unique to the public sector, Wixon said. In the private sector, he said that working with various business units required an understanding of their mission in order to communicate with leadership, in their own terms, how a technology might help them accomplish their goals. In the role of BIT commissioner, he is looking at state agencies similarly, viewing them as unique business units.

“If you can start to understand what their strategy is — what are they trying to accomplish — then we can help build that bridge towards how technology can enable that,” he said.

Wixon also underlined the need for BIT to support agencies in developing technology solutions from the idea stage, through to establishing a strategy, and, finally, to execution.

Key differences between the public and private sectors are the governance structure and funding model at play, he said. In state government, the funding is controlled through the legislature, which entails a broader audience with which building buy-in is required. There is also a balance between state governance and federal governance requirements that need to be met. As such, it is important to understand the business strategy and purpose of each business unit — or state agency, in this case.

This perspective will shape his approach to technology priorities in the state, and the two leading areas Wixon plans to focus on are modernization and cybersecurity. The two areas are intertwined, he said.

When it comes to modernization, Wixon said it needs to be an ongoing effort.

“If you’re not always looking at where technology is going," he said. "You’re going to be finding yourself well behind.”

Cybersecurity, which Wixon described as “critical,” is another area that he said he believes the state needs to be continually improving in order to ensure state government can reliably deliver services in a secure way.

Wixon is looking forward to working with the people and organizations within the state, he said, to better understand the different missions guiding South Dakota government’s work and help enable improvements with those targets in mind.

To help agencies be successful, Wixon said he believes “that you’re meeting the business where they are at — you’re understanding what their purpose is — because that’s how you deliver value.”