The resignation of Deputy Chief Information Officer (DCIO) Jagjit Dhaliwal, along with the announcement that Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Ralph Johnson is also leaving the county, leaves three vacancies at the top of the county’s IT directorate: CIO Bill Kehoe left that role earlier this summer and on Aug. 1 took over as Washington’s state CIO. Recruitment for that position is ongoing.
In addition to working to fill the CIO, DCIO and CISO roles, the county has an ongoing recruitment for a chief data officer.
Dhaliwal, a frequent speaker at industry forums and briefings and an occasional contributor to Techwire, said in an interview last week that he had been exploring other options in the past few months “where I could add more value to the overall industry, and not just one particular agency.”
On Tuesday, he started in his new role: vice president for industry practice for UiPath, a leading provider of robotic process automation (RPA) products and services. Dhaliwal said he became familiar with the company during several projects in recent years, and he said he learned a lot about the use of AI and bots in streamlining and automating government services.
Through that experience and what he learned, Dhaliwal said, he hopes to show other state and local government IT leaders across the U.S., and potentially abroad, what process automation can do for them. Dhaliwal said the experience and knowledge he’s gained by serving as the deputy IT chief for the nation’s most populous county will help him spread the word to CIOs about RPA and automation in government.
Dhaliwal said that in many smaller jurisdictions, some IT leaders aren’t yet familiar or comfortable with RPA technology and how to apply it to their needs. That’s one area where he said he hopes to inform these leaders about the potential gains in efficiency through use of bots, AI and the reduction in people-centric processes that can be automated.
“That will be my role,” he said, “how I can continue working with the CIOs of different agencies and help them with their automation journeys, wherever they are, and how they can adopt it and get value.”
Dhaliwal said the increase in governments’ digital transformation since the COVID-19 pandemic began has been encouraging and beneficial to the public and private sectors alike.
Dhaliwal graduated from Punjab Engineering College in India with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, electronics and electrical communication. He has an executive master’s in business administration and several other advanced credentials from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. He also has professional certifications from, among others, Amazon Web Services and Sun Microsystems.
Dhaliwal started his career working for companies in the New Delhi area as a software engineer and then as an IT officer. Following that, he was engagement manager for Tata Consultancy Services in the U.S., Hong Kong and India, then was named director and client partner for Cognizant, based in Burbank and Canada. He joined Los Angeles County government in 2018.
He’ll remain in the Los Angeles area and said he plans to continue public speaking and other activities in the IT community.
