Experts Share Tips from 'Modern CIO Playbook'

In the complex hierarchy of state government, today’s IT leaders must function not only as a resource for technology, but also as the chief executive of a small business.

That was among the takeaways from a panel of state agency information officers and chief information officers, who gathered at last week’s 2020 Public Sector CIO Academy in Sacramento for a panel discussion on “The Modern CIO Playbook.”

First, the basics: What’s the difference between a CIO and an AIO? The CIO generally oversees a department’s IT-related operations — hardware, software, staffing and other day-to-day concerns. An AIO operates at a higher level, ensuring that the policy priorities of an agency secretary are implemented and sometimes serving as a clearinghouse for multiple CIOs in the AIO’s domain. (Sometimes the CIO and the AIO are the same person.)

The panel’s two AIOs were Andrew Armani, deputy secretary for the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency and also AIO for the Government Operations Agency; and Marcie Kahbody, deputy secretary and AIO for the California State Transportation Agency, which encompasses the California Highway Patrol (CHP), the California Department of Transportation, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the High-Speed Rail Authority (HSR). The two CIOs on the panel were Chief Scott Howland of the CHP and Patty Nisonger of HSR.

The panelists’ advice to CIOs and aspiring CIOs:

• Look for “lessons learned” by others rather than reinventing the wheel, Kahbody counseled. Consult with peers and colleagues regularly. Build trust horizontally as well as vertically within your organization by establishing relationships. Look for a mentor.
• Nurture relationships within the state control agencies — particularly the California Department of Technology and the Department of Finance. Those connections can offer invaluable help with a high-stakes project or submittal, such as a budget change request, Nisonger said. She noted that having fellow CIOs as well as vendors and departmental subject matter experts in one’s network is also helpful. “We need to be businesspeople and run a business,” she said. “A CIO is like a CEO.” 
• Howland specifically values relationships with other CIOs and with executive sponsors — higher-ups in the state hierarchy who can greenlight a proposal. He noted that CIOs even compare notes and insights about individual vendors — which ones are trustworthy and which ones are just looking for a quick sale.

Howland also said it’s important for CIOs to understand not only how their department works, but also how state government works.

“You must understand the (department’s) business: What are you trying to do here? What is the business need? And one of the secrets is you’ve got to know how to tell the story. Sometimes in IT, we talk IT, but we’re not talking to IT people. We need to do it in a way that Finance understands what our outcomes are. We need to do it in such a way that when the Legislative Analyst’s Office looks at it, they’re going to want to support it. And when it gets to the Legislature, they’re going to go, ‘Oh, I get it.’ That’s how you get money to pay for these projects, but if we don’t tell the story right, we’re not going to be successful.”

So how does the “modern” CIO’s role differ from the traditional one?

Armani, who’s been at the CIO level or higher for 20 of his 30 years with the state, said he’s seen a “huge change” in the job duties of the CIO.

For today’s CIOs and AIOs, he said, “Their job is not to be a nuts-and-bolts kind of thing. It’s to be another C-level person out there. … By knowing these kinds of processes, it will make you a lot more credible. That’s kind of how you sit at that table.”