Top of Mind: State Tech Leaders on the Trends of 2023

The stories in our December magazine offer analysis from the GovTech editorial team of the biggest news of the year. But what do the newsmakers think? We asked these state technology leaders what stood out for them as central themes of 2023.

“I think there’s a theme of technology acceptance. Overwhelmingly across the business we’re seeing acceptance of technology as a cost center that’s not going away and that, in fact, is necessary in order to be able to continue to meet the demands of the constituencies we serve. Technology absolutely has to be a partner in that. And we’re seeing more and more the business side of agencies accepting that and looking to modernize and revolutionize their platforms." — Amanda Crawford, Texas CIO and Executive Director, Texas Department of Information Resources

“The biggest theme is digital services, enabling digital services for the citizen and doing it securely. I think cybersecurity will always be a No. 1 priority of state IT offices because our No. 1 responsibility is to protect the systems and data that the constituents trust us to. Providing the digital services in a more efficient and effective manner is how government technology will be an enabler of government services." — Timothy Galluzi, Nevada CIO

“The biggest thing for us would be the retirement of legacy applications. We started this administration with an enormous IT backlog, IT debt as a result of the lack of funding in other administrations. And so thankfully the governor and the leadership team in the current administration said we’ve got to fix this. And so we’ve spent the eight years of this administration retiring legacy technologies and putting them into a posture of being on modern supportable technologies. We’ve moved the needle in a big way." — Dickie Howze, Louisiana CIO

“A lot of it has been the resident experience and all the components that go toward that — not just user-centered design. But we’re focused on identity management, making sure we do that very well as an enterprise. I also think that foundation of good security services across the enterprise, maturing those is vital to our future. But really, our theme is connected government, connecting agencies, connecting data and really building that foundation so that we can make our resident experience more efficient than it is today." — Bill Kehoe, Washington CIO

“AI has probably been one of the biggest topics. The second one is something near and dear to my heart, whole-of-state cybersecurity efforts: really looking holistically across all of our state, across all levels of government, or cities or counties or school districts, or tribal nations, and state agencies, and seeing how we can all help protect each other because it’s truly a thing that we can’t do alone. And we all need to be working together to protect all organizations across government." — Ryan Murray, Arizona CISO

This story originally appeared in the December issue of Government Technology magazine. Click here to view the full digital edition online.