CIO Talks Creating Efficiencies for Internal and External Customers in Fort Bend County

As part of Industry Insider — Texas’ ongoing efforts to educate readers on state and local government, their IT plans and initiatives, here’s the latest in our periodic series of interviews with departmental IT leaders.

Robyn Doughtie is the director of information technology and chief information officer for Fort Bend County.

A short drive from Houston, Fort Bend County has doubled its population and just about doubled its IT division in the last 15 years. County commissioners are in negotiations to build a dedicated multimillion-dollar IT facility to house a data center, staff, interns, open workspaces, offices and dedicated meeting spaces. The division supports all aspects of the county’s internal- and external-facing technology.

Doughtie has served Fort Bend County for about 15 years, first as a programmer analyst and making her way to CIO in 2019. She is highly involved in the community and holds a master’s and a bachelor’s degree.

Industry Insider — Texas: Describe your role as CIO of your organization.

Robyn Doughtie: Driving IT transformation, I lead a talented team of IT professionals in the areas of application development, enterprise system support, project management, network and voice infrastructure, server operations and cybersecurity. It is an all-encompassing role that provides technology services and solutions to 82 departments and offices that serve the residents, visitors and businesses of Fort Bend County. As CIO, my goal is to introduce innovative IT solutions that improve operational effectiveness through stakeholder engagement, partnership development and team leadership.

IITX: In your tenure in this position, which project or achievement would you like to highlight?

Doughtie: There are so many of my team’s achievements that I would love to highlight. I think the entire department had a hand at successfully standing up COVID-19 vaccine sites including a vaccine drive-through. This involved networking a parking lot. Next, we deployed a body-cam technology solution for our law enforcement partners. This was a huge win in transparency and innovative policing. Recently we launched a new service desk incident reporting solution, ServiceNow. Annually we receive over 30,000 support requests and with the deployment of ServiceNow we have a modern enterprise solution that also provides the ability to track our projects, log assets and — in the future — reduce our support response time with the implementation of AI. Lastly, we just deployed Workday as our applicant tracking solution. Candidates applying for a job will have a seamless process to efficiently take their information and automatically upload it into our system. Hiring managers will be able to respond faster, reducing the wait time during the hiring process.

IITX: Would you share with us some of the plans for the county IT building that is in initial stages and how it will improve operations?

Doughtie: The journey to a new IT building has been a long time coming. Our current building was originally designed as an office building. In the 1980s the vision wasn’t to outgrow the building. I started in 2009, and IT was housed on the second floor with the tax office and a courtroom on the first floor. We probably had about 50 IT professionals working in the building. Currently we have 90 full-time employees and 15 contractors. During the summer we take on as many as 40 interns. We have outgrown our space. The aging building infrastructure doesn’t allow us to grow and support county offices as efficiently as we would like. The new IT building will be a secure facility dedicated to IT only. Our governing body, Commissioners Court, recognized the challenges we faced, and through their support and funding, we will move into a state-of-the-art facility with a first-class data center. Employees will no longer have to hotel or share desks/cubicles/offices. We will have adequate meeting space as well as a training room that will allow us to provide classroom-style teaching of our various technology solutions. We are slated to break ground in October 2024. A lot of planning has gone into the new building to account for network circuits (backup/redundant) and even proximity to our customers.

IITX: What is your budget, and how many employees do you have? What is the agency’s overall budget?

Doughtie: Information Technology’s (Fiscal Year 2025) operating budget is $27 million. IT employs 90 full-time staff with about 15 contractors. Overall, Fort Bend County’s FY 25 budget is $731 million.

IITX: What sorts of developing opportunities and RFPs should we be watching for in the next six to 12 months?

Doughtie: We are planning for a one-stop permit shop solution. Currently when someone wants to open a business, they must physically visit several Fort Bend County offices for different permits or inspections. Our goal is to reduce inefficiency and provide a solution that can meet the needs of the customers.

IITX: What do you think is the greatest technology challenge for municipalities?

Doughtie: The greatest technological challenge is the organization of data. We’re all guilty of having multiple systems to store different types of data. Finding and identifying the data and putting it in a shared system with other like data has been a technology challenge for ages. Fort Bend County has an enterprise document management system, and our network servers have now reached petabyte storage. Organizing this data without duplicating it is challenging.

IITX: How might vendors best educate themselves before meeting with you?

Doughtie: I like to promote the work of my team and Fort Bend County on LinkedIn. Vendors can see what I’ve shared about the team’s accomplishments and search Fort Bend County. I’ve been impressed when vendors have referenced news articles about technology initiatives or other happenings in the county.

IITX: How do you prefer to be contacted by vendors?

Doughtie: I recognize that it can be challenging to reach some CIOs. I’ve found it effective when I receive a LinkedIn message and an email. I’ll recognize the name and get an opportunity to look up the vendor. I’m not a fan of vendors that put meetings on my calendar or give the impression that I said they should follow up with me when we’ve never talked. My team is extremely helpful when vendors contact either the IT service desk or the IT front office and share their contact information. I get a lot of vendor calls, and it’s hard for me to check my full voicemail box. My team is really good about messaging me vendor contact details when a vendor calls them.

IITX: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the government technology/SLED sector?

Doughtie: I subscribe to a variety of publications in the government and IT sector. StateScoop, Smart Cities, Government Technology*, National CIO Review and TechTarget are a few of the ones that I frequently read. I also receive notifications from MS-ISAC, NACo (National Association of Counties) and OCA (Office of Court Administration). I am a Gartner account holder and heavily use their resources about technology. My peer network locally and across the U.S. are the best resources for me to find out what is trending in the industry and what challenges are faced.

IITX: What professional or affinity groups do you belong to? Do you volunteer and would you like to share that experience with readers?

Doughtie: I am an advisory board member of HoustonCIO and often attend Society for Information Management and Evanta Gartner events. I have also spoken at BUiLT (Blacks United in Leading Technology). I am passionate about mentoring and encouraging individuals to pursue STEM careers. I regularly volunteer and mentor with our county judge’s youth leadership program. This year I am serving as a stakeholder for the youth as they research AI. Previous years the team researched and assisted with developing a body-cam policy. I host almost 40 interns every summer. It’s so hard for me to say “no” to anyone interested in interning in IT. I regularly hold workshops with the interns on resume writing, career planning and job interview preparation. Youth today are so intelligent. Every time I talk with them, I learn from them. I hope that I can share some of my wisdom with them and encourage them to find their passion.

IITX: What conferences do you attend?

Doughtie: I attend the National Association of Counties, Gartner CIO Leadership Forum, Gartner IT Symposium, Inspire CIO Converge Conference and RTM Fall/Summer Government IT Congress. I also attend local conferences that cater to IT professionals.

IITX: What are you reading or listening to for fun? What do you do to unplug in your downtime?

Doughtie: I love to read in my downtime. In fact, I was a bookworm growing up, and this has continued into adulthood. I tend to read thrillers. With a stressful job, it’s probably not the best genre for me to read but I must have been a private investigator in my past life. I do throw in a few romance novels to not stress my heart so much. One of the last books I read was The Last Flight by Julie Clark. I also love almost anything by James Patterson, J.D. Robb and Janet Evanovich. I just missed a day reading in August and broke my streak at 446 days consecutively reading. Besides reading I unplug by spending time with my family. I’ve been married for 16 years, and my husband and I have three active kids ranging in age from 14 to 5 years old. My husband and I manage chauffeur duties to dance, swim, basketball, softball, jiu jitsu, soccer and tutoring. I am their biggest cheerleader even when I know nothing about the sport, like basketball. But I’ve even been known to coach a team after googling “how to coach basketball.”

*Note: Government Technology and Industry Insider — Texas are both part of e.Republic.