| | DECEMBER 20199CIOReviewKerry L. Goode2. Along with many other high priority items, such as repairing or replacing infrastructure, new housing developments to meet the need of the growing population, and fi rst responder initiatives, technology trends should be on your list of priorities in order to save money, secure data, and improve productivity. Your views on this trend.The CIO for Durham is leveraging efficient and effective IT strategy to address the demands of a growing City business units. The IT strategies being executed to address the aforementioned priorities are the following:· Building a robust fiber network with a private sector partner. The network expands to include the public housing areas of the city where free Wifi connectivity is offered.· Modernizing the on-premise data center with transformation into a cloud/on-premise data center hybrid model to increase the business value of IT and to build business resiliency.· City's IT governance process that requires a business case that requires alignment with enterprise compliance and enterprise architecture· Open data program for business units and world-wide community utilization. Anyone can gain insight utilizing business intelligence tools such as Power BI. The city is teaching employees to use data by offering classes within the data academy.3. Please elaborate on the challenges that the organizations will need to address related to Public Sector space.The challenges that the City of Durham have are the following:· Hiring and retaining the human capital with the talent required to support on-premise systems is a challenge. Citys' Compensation and Classification systems are not competitive for some highly technical positions required for Public Sector space if the city is competing with high tech private sector organizations for same limited human capital with the desired skills.· Managing the growth of IT systems with the alignment of the appropriate support resources to ensure systems deployed are sustainable for the long term with the run cost covered effectively.· Growing the organization capacity to utilize data and new technologies while completing the whirlwind of daily activities that have to get done for the residents is a challenge due to the public sector human capital being lean (read Steve Covey's 4 Disciplines of Execution for better understanding the challenges)4. What are the major tasks for organizational CIOs at this point in time? Is there any unmet need in terms of Public Sector space that is yet to be leveraged from the vendors?The major tasks for organizational CIOs are to lead their organization into the future utilizing evolving and emerging technologies that solve the ever-changing business problems. The leadership can be accomplished with the following strategies. The CIO should work to· Build effective relationships with all business units. The CIO should be the IT consultant for each business units. I make house calls to each unit quarterly.· Have a good understanding of each business unit's operations· Have a good understanding of the enterprise IT architecture· Build an IT governance framework to guide the organization new IT investments and to sustain the existing IT investments5. The cloud is not only for your offi ce workers but also for your fi rst-line workers, including clerks, emergency response teams, police offi cers, and parks and recreation workers. What can organizations do to stay abreast of these changes?The City of Durham IT department (Technology Solutions) spend a significant amount of the department's allocated budget on consultative services and training for the CIO, IT manager and all staff for training to ensure that we are aware of IT solutions for increasing employee productivity and engagement. In additions, a significant amount of time is spent by the CIO and staff on benchmarking. The benchmarking is utilized to learn how the public sector organizations are utilizing the cloud and other technologies.6. What is your advice for budding technologists in the Public Sector space? How do you see the evolution a few years from now with regards to disruptions and transformations within Public Sector space?My advice to new technologists is to make an effort to understand the business strategy of the organization along with the business operations from a conceptual perspective. It is also important to understand how automation is solving the current problems within the business. The technologist of future value will need to know how to align IT improve business value and performance value. The major tasks for organizational CIOs are to lead their organization into the future utilizing evolving and emerging technologies that solve the ever-changing business problems
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