What Should Your State IT Organization Look Like in 20 Years?

Editor's note: The following article was originally published by Industry Insider — California's sister publication, Government Technology, as part of its coverage of the recent National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) midyear conference in Philadelphia last week.

A critical component of any leadership position is planning for the future — and thinking about the necessary steps to ensure your organization is pointed in that direction. At last week's National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) Midyear Conference in Philadelphia, GT asked technology leaders to consider what their IT organizations should look like a decade or two from now.

Iowa CIO Matt Behrens envisions a shift for his IT workforce toward more strategic work.

"We have a wonderful group of people. We need to support them on a journey to get to an environment where they can provide oversight and guidance and be partners to the agencies," he said. "That probably means there'll be less technical work that happens inside of our IT organization over time as we become a strategic partner. That's really the direction I think we'll be headed."

In California, CIO Liana Bailey-Crimmins sees a significant shift on the horizon as well — one in which subject matter experts in certain lines of business increasingly bring technical know-how to their roles, breaking down traditional government silos between IT and other agencies and spreading technical expertise across the state.

The net result? "What you're delivering is more aligned to what the mission is for your company or your department," Bailey-Crimmins said.



Video transcript: I've had the privilege of being in technology for over three decades, and I can just imagine as I look where I started my career to today, and we know Moore's Law, how it's accelerating every minute, every day of how the emerging technologies continue to just blossom into the art of the possible.

What I see in 20 years is really a blending. Right now, you have business areas that are subject matter experts in health care, financial, actuary services, the delivery of benefits, and then you have technology as an enabler. What I see is that that's going to start to blend, where you're going to have more business leaders and technology working as one versus it being a separate skill set. We know actuaries go and they learn to code. A lot of, you know, we're even thinking of prompt engineering and all the opportunity, you're enabling the business to do more technology on the front end. And so it being this line of separation, I think the expertise are going to blend. I saw that in health care when you talked about impacts and risks, you know, you just talked about these systems, the imaging experts were also becoming the tech experts. And I just see in 20 years, you're going to see both. And so I think computer science and then going off and having a business degree, I think at some point you're going to see more MIS and more blending is what I'd like so that you have less silos and that what you're delivering is more aligned to what the mission is for your company or for your department.