On this week’s Priorities Podcast, Mississippi Chief Information Officer Craig Orgeron says it was the challenge of government service that brought him back into the fold after retiring from the role four years ago. Changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the popularization of generative artificial intelligence have transformed government over the past four years, creating a new set of challenges for Orgeron, who’d already spent a decade in the CIO role in Mississippi before his return. “The first thought that kept recurring was the enormity of the challenge, was the first real thought, of how different the world is,” Orgeron says when asked why he returned to the role. “I think there’s sort of a post-COVID reality, I think there’s certainly a generative AI reality and there’s beyond certain a cloud reality. And I think how public sector organizations think about and through that is transformational.”

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