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Announcing the 2022 StateScoop 50 Awards winners

The StateScoop 50 Awards honor the most influential people in state government IT and the most innovative projects that improve services.

Scoop News Group is thrilled to announce the winners of the 2022 StateScoop 50 Awards.

The awards, now in their ninth year, honor the most influential people in the state government community and the most innovative projects that advance services and solutions for residents. 

The 2022 edition of the awards were presented at a reception in conjunction with the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ midyear conference in National Harbor, Maryland, sponsored by Appian, Salesforce, Spectrum Enterprise and Zoom.

In January, members of the state and local IT community nominated more than 1,000 leaders and projects for the awards. StateScoop narrowed the list to nearly 180 finalists, and readers cast more than 3.5 million votes to select this year’s winners.

“This year marks the ninth StateScoop 50 Awards, and my team and I remain thankful for the incredible work done by the state IT community in these challenging times,” said Jake Williams, the vice president of content and community of StateScoop and EdScoop. “The winners of the 2022 StateScoop 50 Awards are truly exceptional leaders and include innovative projects that are setting the stage for even more transformation in government.”

This year’s winners represent 23 states and 13 private-sector companies. Winners include one governor, numerous C-level information technology leaders and noteworthy projects from across the country. 

The winners:

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Jonathan Askins

Chief Technology Officer, State of Arkansas

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

Jonathan Askins had never worked in government before December 2020, when Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson hired him as CTO. Since then, Askins has overseen a centralization of state-government networks, an effort he says was long-discussed but never completed. “That’s been something that’s been talked about for years, but over the last 12 to 13 months we’ve seen some really fantastic process,” he says. He’s also been focused on repurposing the state Division of Information Systems as a more business-minded organization. “Everything we do here is customer-focused, whether it’s a department or ultimately the citizens of Arkansas,” he says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Tracy Barnes

Chief Information Officer, State of Indiana

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

In April 2021, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed legislation giving the Indiana Office of Technology greater responsibilities and authorities in helping state agencies and local governments deal with cyberattacks. In the year since, CIO Tracy Barnes has been on something of a roadshow, with he and his team visiting more than 40 of the state’s 92 counties so far as he builds up a whole-of-state cybersecurity strategy. “The legislation created some awareness. But what we did in conjunction is what created the relationships,” says Barnes, who has plans to visit the remaining counties by the end of the year. “It’s putting us in a stronger position as a state overall.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Matthew Behrens

Interim Chief Information Officer, State of Iowa

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

As interim CIO of Iowa, Matthew Behrens heads an organization striving to improve technology both inside government and across the state. Iowa is expanding its cybersecurity operations center to support local governments, while also spending $350 million on broadband to improve connectivity to more than 110,000 homes, schools and businesses, he says. “We feel like we’re making important progress toward ultimately ensuring that all Iowans have access to fast and reliable internet service, which opens so many doors, whether it’s learning online, working remotely, starting a business or receiving health care from a remote provider,” Behrens says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

DeAngela Burns-Wallace

Chief information technology officer, State of Kansas

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

As Kansas’ chief information technology officer, DeAngela Burns-Wallace has overseen a sea change in how agencies share cybersecurity intelligence. “Collaboration is vital to addressing cybersecurity, and we spent the last year building relationships in the public and private sectors across Kansas to identify how and where we can work together,” Burns-Wallace says. She’s also led creation of a new IT framework that keeps state agencies on the same page. “As we talk with agencies to forecast the support and IT services they’ll need, the objectives and goals of the framework will help guide those conversations,” she says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Laura Clark

CIO, State of Michigan

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

A 15-year veteran of Michigan government IT, Laura Clark pulls double duty as the state’s chief security officer and — as of last October — statewide CIO. “It’s been an interesting transition,” she says, but one that’s allowed her to look at Michigan’s internal processes and find opportunities modernize legacy systems and support a workforce that’s transitioning from the pandemic into a hybrid-work organization. She’s also got a growing focus on human-centered design for internal- and external-facing applications, especially as Michigan’s single sign-on portal grows. “Our residents no longer want to go agency to agency. They want to go through the portal and complete multiple interactions and they don’t care what agency they’re getting it from,” she says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Amanda Crawford

CIO, State of Texas

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

“It’s definitely been quite a year,” Texas CIO Amanda Crawford says of her agency’s efforts to implement all the measures of a wide-ranging data and cybersecurity law Gov. Greg Abbott signed last summer. That’s included naming data officers at every executive-branch agency, launching the TexRAMP cloud vendor certification program — which aims to do for the state what FedRAMP does for the U.S. government — and, most recently, planning the first of a series of regional security operation centers at Angelo State University, which will help protect West Texas communities from cyber threats. But Crawford says the 220-employee Department of Information Resources has been able to handle the added duties: “We’re small but mighty.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Katrina Flory

CIO, State of Ohio

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

Nearly a year into her run as Ohio’s CIO, Katrina Flory has focused on moving more of the state’s agencies onto a modern web platform, which she says has made it easier than ever for Ohioans to reach government resources. The InnovateOhio platform, which was launched in 2019 by Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, has prioritized user experience to improve both digital and offline interactions with state offices, Flory says. “Citizens don’t necessarily have to walk into an office to get the service they need. And if they do walk in they have good service,” she says. She’s also overseen refreshes on a number of internal systems, including Ohio’s ERP system and telecommunications strategy.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Bill Kehoe

CIO, State of Washington

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

Even though Bill Kehoe says “it’s been a crazy year, at least for me” in going from CIO of Los Angeles County, California, to statewide CIO in Washington, it wasn’t too much of a culture shock. Both governments, he says, are highly federated in their IT strategies, but Kehoe says he’s been able to implement some big changes in Washington already, including a council of agency CIOs that meets regularly, as well as new business-management and security-governance councils. “The biggest shift for me in local government, you are one step closer to the people you serve,” he says. “The state provides critical services as well, but you’re a little removed from the front lines. But it’s an opportunity.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Larry Hogan

Governor, State of Maryland

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

As he closes out his second term in Annapolis, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has taken several new steps to broaden the state’s cybersecurity activities. Last November, he appointed Maryland’s first-ever chief data and chief privacy officers, who’ve been tasked with drafting strategic plans for how state agencies handle residents’ personal identifying information. He also forged a partnership with the National Security Agency, conveniently headquartered in Fort Meade, in which an NSA analyst will advise on the state’s data-security plans. Meanwhile, Hogan’s administration is also attempting to lower the barrier to entry on state IT jobs, announcing in March that hundreds of positions will no longer require applicants to hold four-year college degrees.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Doug Murdock

CIO, Hawaii

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

Serving as Hawaii’s CIO since 2019, much of Doug Murdock’s tenure has overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic — particularly in coordinating technology for the tourism-dependent state’s Safe Travels program. Balancing safety with rejuvenating the economy after initial shutdowns, the program has logged 12 million trips, with about 96% of quarantine exemptions granted. And Murdock says much of the technology that debuted during the pandemic has longer-lasting applications. “We used call center and AI and chatbots and voice bots for the first time in Safe Travels, and now it’s being used by unemployment insurance and health and human services,” he says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Angelo “Tony” Riddick

CIO, State of New York

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

As New York’s CIO, Angelo “Tony” Riddick spent much of his first year-plus in Albany overseeing the rollout of and revisions to Excelsior Pass, the state’s COVID-19 vaccine passport. Making it compatible with records from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was a “major accomplishment,” the 30-year Army veteran says. Meanwhile, he continues to lead an IT workforce of 3,100 employees, responsible for tasks like equipping a massive state workforce now on a hybrid schedule and building out a new cybersecurity operations center that opened in Brooklyn last fall. “I have a dedicated force…that simply knows how to get the job done,” he says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Shawnzia Thomas

CIO, State of Georgia

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

Shawnzia Thomas says she’s been impressed and embraced by the team at the Georgia Technology Authority since last June, when Gov. Brian Kemp named her as state CIO, after the retirement of Calvin Rhodes, who’d held the job for a decade. Thomas, previously a deputy commissioner of the state’s human services agency, has expanded on GTA’s cloud-first strategy and served on the commission that selected the 49 broadband projects around the state that received more than $400 million from the American Rescue Plan. “We have a great group of people here who will do whatever it takes to move the needle in Georgia,” she says. “I’m most excited about the excitement we have here in Georgia.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Ed Toner

CIO, State of Nebraska

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

With nearly seven years as Nebraska’s CIO, Ed Toner’s work of consolidating and modernizing state IT systems is approaching a landmark: He says the state is updating its “very last legacy system,” Nebraska’s Medicaid platform. “We’re putting in a no-wrong-door approach so they can come in and get services from one entry,” Toner says. A new front end, called iServe, went live in April “without issue.” Toner says the tech will soon be expanded for use in other agencies. “We’re trying to be more efficient, more effective and customer focused. That’s really what we’re going for,” he says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Amy Tong

Secretary of Government Operations, State of California

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year 

Tong was named California’s secretary of government operations in March, following five years as CIO. She oversaw rapid-fire technology improvements during that time, with the state launching more than 20 data dashboards for tracking COVID-19 and undertaking 75 emergency tech procurements, accelerating the timeline on projects that otherwise would have taken much longer, Tong says. “We all have become more comfortable in taking cautious risk and kind of coupled that with a lot of the transparency of what we’re doing — sharing the journey of how we reach our end goal — and that is bringing a lot of folks along,” she says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Curtis Wood

CIO, Commonwealth of Massachusetts

GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year

Wood started as Massachusetts’ CIO in 2018, just after the state formed its new Executive Office of Technology Services and Security. Before taking on the CIO role in 2018, Wood served in the commonwealth’s public safety and security office, where he oversaw the modernization of 911 services. The last year has brought plenty of change to Wood’s office, as Massachusetts looks to update its systems and move toward cloud infrastructure. He says that along with those transitions, his team is working to shore up a new mobile work environment, simplify the state’s technology footprint and improve digital service delivery.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Seth Barun

Lt. Col., North Carolina National Guard

State IT Leadership of the Year

Lt. Col. Seth Barun serves as branch chief of the North Carolina National Guard’s cyber unit, leading soldiers and airmen who help state agencies, local governments and critical-infrastructure operators protect against and respond to cyberattacks, responding to at least 30 incidents in 2021 alone. The National Guard is a major component of North Carolina’s Joint Cybersecurity Task Force, a five-year-old interagency group that earlier this year received broader responsibilities under an executive order from Gov. Roy Cooper.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Natriece Bryant

Deputy Chief Customer Officer, State of Colorado

State IT Leadership of the Year

When the American Rescue Plan passed last year, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis tapped Natriece Bryant, the deputy chief customer officer in the state Office of Information Technology, as his point person to distribute $1.3 billion to Colorado’s counties. “We have 64 counties in the state, so I have 64 opinions on where that money should go,” she says. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to figure out how you distribute a billion dollars effectively.” She also oversaw the use of another $600 million in ARP funds for state IT improvements, including programs tackling homelessness and the housing shortage.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Mark Combs

CTO, State of Vermont

State IT Leadership of the Year

As Vermont’s CTO, Mark Combs is responsible for building modern applications to be used by the state’s agencies — a process that’s accelerated in recent years thanks to a new strategy that maps out development and assigns dedicated teams for each cloud platform. “We not only created the map of what the ecosystem looked like, but we created a center for enablement behind each of those platforms,” he says. The shift has allowed Vermont’s Agency for Digital Services to expand its portfolio. “We used to have 20 concurrent IT projects — today we’re at 95,” Combs says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Nikhil Deshpande

Chief digital officer, State of Georgia

State Leadership of the Year

Georgia’s longtime chief digital officer, Nikhil Deshpande has played key roles in establishing the state’s social media presence and leading the move to an enterprisewide open-source publishing system. Recently, Deshpande’s team has been working with agencies to improve their digital services, setting up measures to measure the success of various services. “We cannot just be offering online services with technology in mind, we have to cater the services with users at the center and then build the services around user needs,” he says. A key component of improving services: Google rankings. Deshpande said that part of ensuring citizens can use state services is being able to search and find them.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Krishna Edathil

Director of enterprise solution services, State of Texas

State IT Leadership of the Year

The Texas Department of Information Resources has in recent years created multiple centers of excellence — educational offices to support officials in learning new technologies — for cloud, AI and soon, robotic process automation. “We help Texas agencies who in turn help Texas people,” says Krishna Edathil, who as DIR’s director of enterprise solution services runs the Centers of Excellence program. “We have to be fast and innovative and help people who don’t understand technology and how we improve the lives of people.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Hugh Hale

CIO, TennCare

State Leadership of the Year

As CIO of TennCare, Tennessee’s Medicaid program, Hugh Hale recently led the creation of a new, highly automated eligibility system. “We’ve made it much easier to apply for benefits,” Hale says. “About 40% of the applications that come in never have to be touched by a human hand.” Serving the state’s “most vulnerable population,” Hale says he strives not only to improve TennCare’s technology, but hire people with “service-oriented hearts.” “When you get the right people in place, you can point that service mentality and service heart toward really innovative ideas to help others,” he says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Kelly Johnson

CIO, Kansas Department of Labor

State IT Leadership of the Year

The Kansas Department of Labor’s April announcement that it’s finally — after some aborted attempts — replacing the 50-year-old mainframe that powers the state’s unemployment system was a big moment for Kelly Johnson, the agency’s CIO. “It will enable us to be able to hire employees that are familiar with current technology,” he says, noting that COBOL skills are increasingly rare in the cloud-first era. “It is a huge relief. Not just in IT, but agency-wide.” But even prior to the cloud contract, Johnson had already implemented new identify-verification software, which he says “exponentially” cut down the fraudulent claims that feasted on pandemic unemployment programs.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Chrissy Nizer

Administrator, Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration

State IT Leadership of the Year

Between 2020 and early 2022, the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration rolled out a new service platform it calls Customer Connect, replacing a mainframe environment with a digital system that gives residents one-stop digital access to a range of transactions, including online renewals of driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations, locating auto dealers and uploading medical records for commercial drivers. As the MVA’s administrator, Chrissy Nizer led the new platform’s implementation.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Duane Schell

CTO, State of North Dakota

Unifying IT services “isn’t the sexiest thing,” says North Dakota CTO Duane Schell, but it is yielding “massive efficiencies” across the enterprise. Schell, who’s worked for the North Dakota government for more than 20 years, says the state’s unification of its tech services has allowed the Information Technology Department to take on dozens of new projects without hiring additional employees. “We’ve turned down a dozen service desks into a single service desk with all the efficiencies and automations,” he says. “We’re measuring about 28 [full-time employees’] worth of effort that we’ve been able to automate and just take on a ton of new capacity.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Timothy Sheehan

Deputy CIO, State of Wyoming

State IT Leadership of the Year

When Wyoming CIO Gordon Knopp resigned in May 2021 amid a major breach of health data, Gov. Mark Gordon asked deputy CIO Timothy Sheehan to restore the reputation of the state’s Department of Enterprise Technology Services. “My core focus was looking at the agency anew,” Sheehan says. “I took a holistic view, did an assessment to understand the state of the agency and realign priorities.” He found ETS was sometimes out of sync with the rest of government. “We weren’t communicating effectively,” he says. “We revamped how we engage our agencies.” There’s also, in light of the breach, a new emphasis on cybersecurity: “It starts with identity management,” Sheehan says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Matt Singleton

CISO, State of Oklahoma

State IT Leadership of the Year

Oklahoma CISO Matt Singleton is responsible for securing 111 state agencies, a mandate that led him to being an early endorser of zero-trust security in state government. That was especially handy as Oklahoma adopted a “work-from-anywhere” model during COVID-19. But it’s also led to a greater understanding of how the state’s network functions. “We’ve got to untangle the hairball,” Singleton told StateScoop last year. “When you’re trying to allow state workers to have remote access, you really have to understand how all those things talk to each other.” The strategy’s also produced significant savings, with a 100% digitally enabled workforce cutting IT costs by $370 million, according to state officials.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Marcus Thornton

Deputy chief data officer, Virginia Office of Data Governance and Analytics

State IT Leadership of the Year

As the No. 2 data official in Virginia, Marcus Thornton is helping mature the commonwealth’s use of data from within a young agency: Though the Virginia Office of Data Governance and Analytics only codified last summer, Thornton says his team began with momentum from a strong interest from other agencies. “We’re extremely encouraged, especially now,” he says. “We have a new administration here and a lot of the focus has been on cybersecurity and specifically on data. And so we have a lot of agency heads and secretaries with data backgrounds, technology backgrounds.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Matt Van Syckle

CTO, State of Montana

State IT Leadership of the Year

Montana CTO Matt Van Syckle is at the forefront of an effort, requested last year by Gov. Greg Gianforte, to get every state-government agency digitize 100% of their business processes. While it’s a big challenge, it’s also encouraged the state’s IT agency to be more collaborative and agile in how it modernizes systems. “It’s true business engagement. We’re seeing the business outcomes support the citizens when business and IT work together,” he says. “Now that we’re moving to an all-modern digital government, we can continue to innovate and improve.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Dale Walters

Chief of network operations, State Of Illinois

State Leadership of the Year

Dale Walters has worked for the State of Illinois for more than six years, first as a telecommunications manager and now as chief of network operations. Walters says one of the lessons that came to the forefront in the last year is balancing implementing technology with supporting the IT team. One of the biggest takeaways from managing a slew of projects during the pandemic is that communication with teams needs to be a “two-way street.” “They also need to recognize during the busy times and during these rough moments that if they have a challenge, I’m here to support them,” he says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Claire Bailey

Regional VP, Veracode

Industry Leadership of the Year

Claire Bailey has been a state CTO and an adviser at several companies. Now a regional vice president of public sector at Veracode, Bailey says she keeps coming back to the word “relationships.” During the early phases of the pandemic, Bailey and other public- and private-sector leaders convened “GovGals,” an effort to bring leaders together and build relationships. Bailey says she’s optimistic about the cybersecurity funding states will have at their disposal. “What I see is the evolution of how we develop and modernize our infrastructure and our public services,” she says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Gary DePreta

Area VP, Cisco

Industry Leadership of the Year

Gary DePreta, Cisco’s area vice president for the U.S. SLED market, has spent more than 20 years working alongside public-sector agencies, but now more than ever he sees the value of the “stewardship role” that those agencies play in residents’ lives. “When the pandemic hit, if you think about the IT resources throughout the country and in particular state, local and education, they really were unsung heroes because we pushed everyone out the door overnight and the world had to keep running,” he says. Now those same agencies are in the “reimagine” phase, DePreta says, driving a new era in citizen experience. 

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Doug Harvey

VP, VMWare

Industry Leadership of the Year

The pandemic brought significant change to how vendors interact with their customers, says Doug Harvey, VMWare’s vice president for U.S. state and local government. “We had to ask the question of what problems are we solving and having that conversation and that shift in approach with our clients and customers,” he says. For VMware, which is prioritizing multi-cloud migration, the move to flexible and remote work is going to be a big driver of change, he says. “The train has left the station. We’re never going back to 90% back in the office,” Harvey says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Don Horan

Global industry practice director, UiPath

Industry Leadership of the Year

Emerging technology, like automation, is about upskilling current employees — not replacing them, says Don Horan, the global industry practice director for state, local and regional at UiPath. “When you go out there and say you’re going to automate or do machine learning, people get scared,” says Horan, a former deputy CIO for New York State. “We’re really upskilling and giving people a new tool to become problem solvers. If we stick with that trend, we’ll be very successful.” Horan says he expects the single-point-of-entry to digital services to be the biggest lasting impact from the pandemic. 

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Kim Majerus

VP for U.S. SLED, Amazon Web Services

Industry Leadership of the Year

In Kim Majerus’ more than 15 years of experience working with public-sector agencies, she says she’s “never seen so much change and passion from our customers to go faster.” As VP for U.S. education, state and local government at Amazon Web Services, she says cloud became an enabler during the pandemic to “help someone stay in their home, get them money to feed their children, and [eventually] return to some sort of normalcy.” Majerus says AWS is focusing on upskilling talent and preparing for a world where everyone — including those in government — can make change happen faster.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Matt Mandrgoc

Head of public sector, Zoom

Industry Leadership of the Year

Few companies have been as influential over the past two years as Zoom. Matt Mandrgoc started in his role as head of public sector in late March 2020, just as stay-at-home orders were being issued across the country. “We were able to help maneuver this interesting dynamic that all of our customers, and our company, was going through,” he says. In addition to providing a platform that let agencies collaborate virtually, the company also helped keep court processes and legislative engagement moving, he says. “During the pandemic, Zoom became ingrained in a lot of people’s personal lives, and that same ease of use was taken into a professional environment,” he says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Joe Perrino

Public Sector VP, Cloudera

Industry Leadership of the Year

The last several years in state and local government have been “a complete flip” from what leaders in those organizations are used to, says Joe Perrino, Cloudera’s public sector VP. In addition to helping agencies move data into a central repository and priming it for analysis, Perrino says the company is also readying its offerings for the continued shift to hybrid and multi-cloud. The key to success either on-premise or in the cloud is accessibility to data, he says. Having data in a centralized and accessible location allows for better analysis, better security and faster decision making, Perrino says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Mary Lou Prevost

Group VP for SLED, Splunk

Industry Leadership of the Year

It wasn’t just state and local IT operations that shifted dramatically over the course of the pandemic — it was industry, too. Splunk invested heavily in cloud to “match what our customers were asking for,” says Mary Lou Prevost, Splunk’s group vice president for state, local and education. The company has also expanded its public-sector offerings to include search tools for unstructured data that can affect outcomes in areas including criminal justice, public safety, education and health care. Prevost says the company will continue to use its tools to enable state and local leaders to make better decisions.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Matthew Schneider

VP of SLED, Palo Alto Networks

Industry Leadership of the Year

Private-sector partners can be major conduits for building collaborative cybersecurity strategies, says Matthew Schneider, VP of SLED at Palo Alto Networks. Especially with the inflow of funding from the federal government, state agencies need to prioritize visibility, infrastructure optimization and actionable security, he said during a Scoop News Group event last month. State leaders also need to be ready for cyberattacks coming as a result of the current conflict in Ukraine, Schenider said at the event. If a successful attack occurs, leaders need to be prepared with a strong recovery plan, he said.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Dean Scontras

VP of SLED, Okta

Industry Leadership of the Year

The top priorities for state CIOs, as defined by NASCIO, show not only what CIOs are focusing on now, but what government will focus on going forward, says Dean Scontras, Okta’s VP of SLED. “The silver lining coming out of COVID is that it really did help catalyze the reinvention of government,” he says. Okta, as an identity and access management provider, plays a crucial role in that reinvention, he says. “You can’t reinvent government until you have trust in a digital world,” he says. “We’ve helped states roll out benefits digitally, and the identity has to be ensured as a result of that.” 

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Rob Stein

Senior vice presdient, Salesforce

Industry Leadership of the Year

As states emerge from the crisis period of the pandemic, citizen experience will be the overarching priority, says Rob Stein, a senior vice president for public sector at Salesforce. “It’s no longer about back-office functions. It’s really more about the citizen-facing stuff,” he says. Stein says that doesn’t lessen the importance of priorities like modernization, but rather that those changes will be made with citizens’ experiences in mind. “We see a ton of really great effort around modernizing the big things, but we see smaller things that are happening really quickly, like basic customer services,” he says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Tina Thorstenson

VP of public sector, CrowdStrike

Industry Leadership of the Year

The cyber threats facing state governments continue to increase in velocity and sophistication, says Tina Thorstenson, VP of public sector at CrowdStrike. “My role in this is to be an evangelist and make sure everyone understands that there are modern solutions available [to combat these threats].” Thorstenson says there’s an increased need for extended detection and response — and more reliance on tech companies to “get it right.” About two-thirds of all states use CrowdStrike tools, which Thorstenson says gives the company a chance to help agencies “partner more fully.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Kevin Tunks

chief architect, Red Hat

Industry Leadership of the Year

The pandemic showed state governments the need to deliver services online. In response, agencies have shifted their approach to deliver mission-critical services with a greater eye toward flexibility. Kevin Tunks, a chief architect and technical adviser at Red Hat, says that shift has also changed the way he and his company interact with state governments. “These large legacy systems were built on principles that were good at the time, but don’t meet today’s needs,” Tunks says. The company is also working with states on solving workforce challenges by creating “patterns” that allow less-technical staff to use their tools.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Contact Center AI

State of Illinois

State IT Innovation of the Year

Illinois implemented an AI-based help desk system to quickly assist residents looking for answers about state services. The state chose Google Contact Center AI to power the system, which numerous agencies use. The system layers chatbots with voice AI software to give customers options for receiving service, while maintaining their place in a phone queue. “We saw over 17 million conversations [in one year], we saw over 300 interactions per minute,” says Dale Walters, the state’s chief of network operations. “And with Google AI, statistically, it showed that we were seeing about a 90% success rate for those interactions.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Georgia Data Analytics Center

State of Georgia

State IT Innovation of the Year

Launched in 2019 as a central depository for data from across state government, the Georgia Data Analytics Center has already launched more than 10 dashboards on which researchers, analysts and members of the public can take a closer look at the state’s finances, property inventory and outcomes. Kanti Chalasani, GDAC’s director, says her five-person team built a scalable, cloud-based analytics system that’s acted as a “pipeline” through which agency data can flow. “The goal is to make Georgia data accessible in a timely manner,” she says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Digital CA Vaccine Record Portal

State of California

State IT Innovation of the Year

California made digital vaccine cards available to its residents last June, launching an online tool that uses QR codes to link residents to their vaccination statuses. Chief Technology Officer Rick Klau says the portal was born “out of necessity” as jurisdictions required people to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 to enter bars and restaurants. There have been few tweaks to the system since, Klau says, but setting the portal up highlighted where data was not making its way from pharmacies to the state’s systems. The portal incentivized health providers to ensure that information was correctly shared. “The quality of the data in the immunization registry itself improved dramatically, so much so that today we estimate over 90% of all requests of the digital vaccine record system are successful,” Klau said.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

MILogin

State of Michigan

State IT Innovation of the Year

Over the past two years, MILogin, Michigan’s single sign-on program, has exploded in popularity as more state services have gone primarily digital. It now claims more than 8.6 million unique users, as Michiganders use single credentials to access unemployment insurance, Medicaid claims, driver’s license services and business filings with the secretary of state’s office, says Rex Menold, who oversees MILogin as the state’s director of enterprise information, content and identity management. He also says it’s made those services more secure: “It’s a thousand times easier to secure one access point than 100 access points,” he says. “That’s why it matters. You need to have a single point of entry. We’re the front door, that first line of defense.”

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

SEAL Program

Indiana Office of Technology

State IT Innovation of the Year

Indiana is having success with its State Earn and Learn, or SEAL, temp-to-hire program, which offers opportunities in IT to residents who have different work experiences, like working in Amazon warehouses or prep kitchens. Of the 17 people in the program so far, two have “graduated” and started working at the Indiana Office of Technology, with 12 more still enrolled. Participants are working in areas including cybersecurity, cloud operations and operations. “We are in a time when the government is seen as being behind, but we’re actually cutting-edge on this. We’re doing something that others really would like to have to follow in our footsteps on,” says Jon Rogers, IOT’s director of workforce planning.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Strategic Contract Management System

Virginia Department of Transportation

State IT Innovation of the Year

The Virginia Department of Transportation’s new strategic contract management system has been “a game changer,” says Brian Kontur, program manager for the department’s Office of Public-Private Partnerships. “It’s intuitive for users,” Kontur says. “These contracts and these roles that VDOT is working with on the contracts, they can be hundreds of years old, so as people come and go, that can be a pain point in handing off that information.” He says the new system also uses low-code technology, making it easier for the commonwealth to maintain long-term.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Texas by Texas (TxT)

Texas Department of Information Resources

State IT Innovation of the Year

If the pandemic taught state governments anything, it’s that it’s more vital than ever to make public services available over mobile devices. And though the Texas by Texas app, or TxT, that the Texas Department of Information Resources launched in January had been in the works since before COVID-19, it arrived as demand for digital government continued to surge. At its launch, TxT offered renewals of driver’s licenses, vehicle registration and a growing list of professional credentials. In just a few months, 1.6 million Texans have already created accounts, state CIO Amanda Crawford says.

2022 StateScoop 50 Awards

Technology Accessibility Program

Colorado Office of Information Technology

State IT Innovation of the Year

Following a state law requiring agencies to set up action plans for making digital services accessible to residents with disabilities, the Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology set up a team to act as a central resource. The two-person team then designed templates to guide agencies through deciding what tools and sites need to be tested and updated. “There’s not a lot of resources out there, so I think they’ve kind of quickly become a sought-after team to help provide that guidance,” Heather Weir, office’s director of strategy, performance and administration, told StateScoop. “I think we’re in this cool spot where people do care and want to do the right thing and so there’s just this hunger for knowledge.”