Industry Insider — Texas: As the CIO for the General Land Office, how do you describe your role – and how have the role and responsibilities of the CIO changed in recent years?
Cory Wilburn: We are a state government agency of about 750 full-time employees. We have a presence that covers most of the state, but most of our team works in the Austin area and along the Texas coast. Our work requires that we partner with vendors throughout many different sectors.
Fun fact: The GLO is actually the oldest government agency in Texas; we were formed before Texas was even a state. The Land Office was created in 1836 to manage all the land that the state of Texas owns. Today that includes around 12 million acres of public land that we primarily use to generate revenue for public schools. While land management was the reason our agency was created, over the 186 years of our existence, we've inherited a number of other responsibilities along the way. Today, our agency includes at least five distinct verticals, and that’s if you look at it from a high level. Long story short, our organization has a very diverse set of missions.
The CIO is responsible for IT operations, project management and strategic planning for all of the organization’s different goals and objectives. We strive to provide excellent customer service and to create relationships with the agency’s other business units where they consider us strategic partners and advisers. To be successful, our teams must know their respective technology domains, but they also must build a strong grasp of the business goals and objectives of each of the missions of our organization.
As for how the role of CIO has changed, I’d say that there are three major things:
- Every other year, we add another area of knowledge and expertise. First, we were IT service providers. Then we adopted agile development. Then the cloud. Then information security, big data, rapid application development, analytics/AI, and so on and so on.
- To align to the blinding pace of change, each year we seem to add more partners, vendors, tools and platforms. That means that each year we become less of a “doer” and more of a “broker.”
- Each year, it gets harder and harder to recruit and retain talent. Technology permeates everything, and there are limited numbers of people with today’s “it” skills.
To be successful, an IT leader needs to be able to learn quickly, to juggle a huge number of competing priories and must be incredibly effective at communicating with different audiences and in different ways.
Industry Insider — Texas: Do you have an IT strategic plan for your organization?
Wilburn: We do have a strategic plan. ... First, we plan a five-year time horizon. We know our plans will change, and that’s OK, we still make plans, and we update them every one to two years. We lay out our upcoming initiatives or focus areas in three different categories or domains:
- Shared IT services: This includes things like data backups, IT disaster recovery, enterprise storage and compute, and other similar IT services that can be shared across the organization.
- Information security: While it’s true that we could consider information security a shared IT service, it has become so important that we choose to recognize it as its own category.
- Business goals: In our organization, these are the five missions (or verticals) that I referenced earlier. We have dedicated goals for each of them.
Industry Insider — Texas: What big IT initiatives or projects are coming to the Land Office 2022? What sorts of RFPs should we be watching for in the next six to 12 months?
Wilburn: Since our fiscal year starts in September, we’re more than halfway through 2022. Looking out at 2023, '24 and '25, we have several digital transformation and modernization initiatives, most of which will focus on our land management mission — specifically, upgrading our oil- and gas-related applications. A few examples include:
- Migrating a custom, n-tier business application from our on-premise data center to the cloud.
- Performing major functionality enhancements to our flagship oil and gas royalty reporting system that will result in improved user experience and deep integration with our financial data.
- Modernizing a custom-built data analysis application that audits oil and gas production and payment data, searching for discrepancies that may lead to additional revenue.
I’ll also say that our agency doesn’t buy into the rhetoric that government is always “behind the times” when it comes to technology. We actively seek out opportunities to innovate. As we move through the next few years, our team will be looking for solutions that make use of artificial intelligence, analytics, machine learning and other modern technologies that can help our agency be more efficient and effective in executing our different missions.
I should add that, being a state agency, we can’t just buy from someone who reaches out to us directly. There are a number of laws that guide our procurement processes. In many cases we can make direct purchases from vendors that are approved by the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR). If we can’t find what we need through a DIR-approved vendor, we often look to the RFP process.
Industry Insider — Texas: Is there a refresh schedule for your major systems you can share with us?
Wilburn: We try to avoid doing extensive equipment refreshes all at one time. We plan for most of our hardware to have a five-year lifespan, and we usually refresh on a regular cadence. So, this year we will replace approximately 20 percent of our laptops, 20 percent of our hyperconverged servers, etc. We will look to purchase from DIR-approved vendors that offer warranties and can install our inventory tags before the equipment is delivered to us. We find that over the long run, pre-tagging and having warranties in place really limit our staff’s hands-on time with devices, which of course saves us time and money over the life of the equipment.
Industry Insider — Texas: How do you define “digital transformation,” and how far along is your organization in that process? How do you know when it's finished?
Wilburn: Great question. To me, “digital transformation” is about integrating technology into every part of the enterprise to drive efficiency, innovation and customer service. I feel like IT has always been about digital transformation. Those of us in the field, we’ve been trying to get technology to soak into the bones of our organizations since we started. Now, thanks to the popularity of the term “digital transformation,” we have an all-encompassing worldwide marketing campaign to help us communicate the benefits that technology has to offer in virtually all aspects of what our organizations do.
How far along are we? In my mind, digital transformation never ends. Technology changes incredibly fast. What we implemented today is awesome. It might be obsolete in three months or five years, but either way, today’s awesome technology solution will become dated and will need to be replaced before we know it. So, technically, I don’t think that digital transformation has an end point.
If I look at it a different way and ask myself, how much of our organization is operating on technology that is well aligned to our needs, I’d say we’re at about 80 percent.
Industry Insider — Texas: How many employees are in your IT organization? Is it growing?
Wilburn: We have around 58 full-time employees spread across different domains including: desktop support, network administration, software development, business analysis, project management, geospatial and business services. We also work with several vendors and private- sector partners on projects.
Our (employee) count changes as our mission and our requirements evolve. Sometimes it shrinks; sometimes it grows. Right now, I think we’re in a stable state.
Industry Insider — Texas: What is your estimated annual IT budget?
Wilburn: Our capital spending budget for FY 2022 is $3,200,000. Our IT operations, including information security, geospatial, and all licensing and service contracts, total approximately $8,700,000.
Industry Insider — Texas: In your 17-plus years at the Land Office, which projects or achievements are you most proud of?
Wilburn: When I joined the organization, I had no intention of staying in the public sector, but I found that I’m incredibly motivated by our mission and the people that I get to work with. The first achievement I would recognize would be our team. We have so many people who could make more money working elsewhere, but most of them choose to be part of our team because we have a good culture, and every day we do work that makes a difference in the lives of Texans and those who visit our state.
If I start thinking back on meaningful projects, I could ramble on with a list that would keep us here for quite a while, but in the interest of time, I’d say that I’m very proud of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the improvements we’ve made in information security over the past four years. I am also proud of our flexible approach to delivering line-of-business solutions, where we have the capability and experience to mix and match between SaaS (software as a service), rapid application development or enterprise software architecture, whatever best fits the business need. Lastly, I appreciate that we have worked with agency leadership to establish solid IT governance and strategic planning processes. There is always more work than we can get to, and governance and strategic planning have really helped us to align our resources to our organization’s most important objectives.
Industry Insider — Texas: How do you prefer to be contacted by vendors? What should they know about you before they reach out?
Wilburn: Since we are a state agency, I would love vendors to understand that we can’t just procure products and services from anyone. Please have a basic understanding of how purchasing works for Texas government agencies before reaching out. If you want our business, show some interest in us. Take a minute to learn about our organization. When you reach out, have some thoughts about specific problems you can solve.
If I’m being honest, I don’t love a phone call out of the blue. It’s incredibly unlikely that I’m sitting at my desk with nothing to do. If you’ve already done Nos. 1 and 2, then email me, tell me how you can help, and ask to coordinate our schedules for a short conversation.
Industry Insider — Texas: If you could change one thing about IT procurement, what would it be?
Wilburn: Answering this would be a whole interview unto itself.
Industry Insider — Texas: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the tech sector?
Wilburn: I try to learn a little bit about a great many different technologies and vendors. I learn enough to identify those capabilities that match our organization’s needs and once I find a match, I dig deeper. I use Twitter, various websites, and go to conferences and trade shows. I also rely on my team. We often share articles and draw one another’s attention to technologies and vendors that might be meaningful to our mission. We also have good partners in the private sector that help us keep pace with changes in the industry.
On my commute I sometimes listen to IT podcasts like IT Visionaries, Technovation and Daily Tech News Show.
We are living in some amazing times. While there is so much cool tech out there, the technology is just a tool. The mission and the people are what really matter.
Industry Insider — Texas: Do you have a “digital hero,” either in the public or the private sector?
Wilburn: I would not say that there is a single person that I look to, but I am blessed to have been exposed to so many great role models from the public and private sectors. I try to improve myself by cherry-picking the best ideas and strategies from others and incorporating those things into my own approach.
I think most of us pay at least some attention to the headline makers like Musk, Bezos, Jobs, Gates, Sandberg, Nadella, etc. In state IT circles, I learned quite a bit watching Todd Kimbriel, Rudy Montoya, George Rios, and my CIO during the formative stages of my career, Stephen Paxman.
Industry Insider — Texas: Personal: Family? Hobbies? Last book read?
Wilburn: I am truly blessed to have an amazing family. My wife is a social worker; she’s out there on the front lines, really helping people. I have a daughter who graduates high school this year and a son that will be graduating next year. We are spending quite a bit of time preparing each of them to transition from high school to college.
I used to sing and play guitar. While I’m not touring with a band anymore, if you’re ever on a road trip with me, you’ll be treated to an amazing live action karaoke performance. I recently finished Richer, Wiser, Happier by William Green and am about to pick up Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman.
