The Public Sector Show by TechTables

A recovery test that only checks for success can’t prove much. Neither can a leader who only says “trust me.”

The University of Wyoming is rolling out an AI platform for faculty, staff, and students, and owned up when one of the trainings went too fast. Grand Valley State’s IT team runs on values that spell ACT, and Miloš Topić is now on record to finish his leadership book sometime in 2027. And Commvault’s Jared Whitehurst thinks a lot of recovery tests are checking for the wrong thing.

I sat down with Amy McLaughlin, Miloš, and Jared at EDUCAUSE 2026 in Denver to talk about all of it. And yes, we also get into ResOps, the minimal viable campus, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, why the network comes first, and my first time wearing a cowboy hat on camera (courtesy of Jared).

Timestamps

0:00 A cowboy hat for the home of the Cowboys

3:55 Why the University of Wyoming told everyone AI was coming before picking a tool

7:55 "I have now four witnesses": Miloš goes on record about his book

10:25 Who has the authority to say "we're recovering"?

13:15 Have the hard conversations before the emergency, not after

16:10 What happened right before that play? A car-ride lesson in accountability

20:10 Your backups are green. "But can you prove that it's clean?"

22:40 Why being nice isn't enough if you don't deliver

23:55 The AI training went too fast. Amy's going back to say so

26:50 Why GVSU’s IT values spell ACT: accountability, collaboration, trust

29:45 Practice vs. perform: why Jared says teams should rehearse their recoveries

Connect with the Guests

💼 Amy McLaughlin, Vice President of IT & CIO, University of Wyoming: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amymcl/
💼 Miloš Topić, Vice President for IT & Chief Digital Officer, Grand Valley State: https://www.linkedin.com/in/topicm/
💼 Jared Whitehurst, Director of Sales, Commvault: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-whitehurst/

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For the past decade, Ramsey County’s CIO, Chetan Ganatra, has been trying to prove that government doesn’t have to be slow and risk-averse, first at the state and now at the county.

It started with a 2017 Star Tribune series on abuse complaints in senior care and his parents living alone in India. When he arrived at the county four and a half years ago, at least 7 to 10 escalations hit his inbox every day. The systems are about the same today. The inbox isn’t.

I talked with Chetan about all of it. And yes, we also get into the first team, why the state felt like a vaccine lab, what he gets out of the GOVIT Leadership Summit & Symposium, and more!

Timestamps

0:00 Government doesn't have to be slow

5:20 Why Chetan joined government

9:30 State lab vs. county front line

12:15 Breaking down IT silos

13:30 Minnesotans and hard conversations

15:20 Service teams, not tech teams

16:20 Measuring the culture shift

20:20 Accountability isn’t a dirty word

21:10 Air cover and psychological safety

22:50 Numbers only tell part of the story

24:30 Why go to GOVIT?

Connect with the Guests
💼 Chetan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ganatrachetan/

Connect with Me
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Recorded on-site at EDUCAUSE 2026 in Denver, inside the Info-Tech Research Group booth, this episode brings together John O'Brien (President & CEO, EDUCAUSE) and Mark Roman (Managing Partner, Education, Info-Tech Research Group).

John has led EDUCAUSE since 2015, and Mark was a CIO for a long time before working with colleges and universities around the world. John and Mark dig into where people still matter when the answers come from machines.

John raises a question that could reshape higher ed: if human connection becomes the premium experience, who gets access to it, and who is left with only automated alternatives?

Mark makes the case that a CIO who sees across the whole institution could rise to COO, and the conversation lands on the messy middle of learning that AI lets students skip.

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro to John O'Brien and Mark Roman

(02:55) College Isn't About the Knowledge

(05:50) Moving Up Bloom's Taxonomy

(10:40) Earning a Seat at the Table

(11:40) Skipping the Messy Middle

(14:20) The Future of the CIO

(17:05) The AI Slop Divide

(18:50) What John Is Proudest Of

(21:00) From Young Professional to Board Chair

(25:30) An Appeal to Kindness

(25:45) Promoted, Still Doing the Old Job

(26:35) Start With Values

Connect with the Guests
💼 John's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnobrienphd/
💼 Mark's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markromanlinkedin/

Connect with Me
🌐 Full episode & transcript: https://podcast.techtables.com/educause-john-obrien-ai-slop/
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🤝 Community: https://techtables.com/communities-local-government
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In this episode, Rob Reynolds (CIO, Orange County, North Carolina) talks about coming from a big Navy family. His dad served in Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs), the unit Rob calls the first Navy SEALs, and in the '60s his team was first out to the space capsules to get the astronauts out. Rob followed his dad into the Navy, then spent about 30 years in IT, including 2 turns as a CISO.

Rob shares what happens when you give people the tools, from the AI sandbox behind a staffer's tax calculator idea, to users trained to flag the message that looks like it came from Rob, to a $10M ARPA broadband buildout that has people calling Rob to say thank you.

Orange County also placed #8 in its population category (150,000–249,999) in the 2026 Digital Counties Survey from the Center for Digital Government and NACo, recognition Rob credits to his team's work modernizing county services.

Timestamps

0:00 A Commodore VIC-20 at age 12, then 2x CISO, now county CIO
1:24 His dad's UDT team got astronauts out of Gemini-era capsules
11:36 An OpenAI Teams subscription, branded as the county's AI Innovation Lab
13:44 Copilot Chat for every county user, and learning circles next
17:04 The AI tax calculator: a former tax staffer's idea, live in 1 day
25:33 When "Rob" asks for gift cards, users know to raise their hand
26:36 An annual cyber survey, timed to October, sets the quarterly training
28:19 Even when AI is battling AI, it all goes back to people
31:31 Short training, no jargon, and CISA lunch-and-learns for staff
32:29 The $10M ARPA broadband buildout reaching about 6,000 unserved homes
33:52 The calls Rob gets from families whose kids can now do classes online
36:52 Why Rob still remembers the names of people who pulled him up

Connect with the Guests
💼 Rob's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robreyn/

Connect with Me
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🤝 Community: https://techtables.com/communities-local-government
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Recorded on-site at CalSTRS in West Sacramento, this episode brings together Ashish Jain (Chief Technology Officer, CalSTRS), Prashant Mittal (Chief Information Officer, California Department of Motor Vehicles), and Hillory Courtney (Managing Partner, Info-Tech Research Group). Ashish and Prashant go back to 1999. Prashant once reported to Ashish, and Ashish attended Prashant's wedding in India, although Prashant jokingly questions if that really happened.

Together with Hillory, the three share about how trust shapes every call they make, from DMV changing course on its modernization, to CalSTRS keeping AI out of decisions, to how Info-Tech helped them both turn ideas into action.

Guests:

Ashish Jain, Chief Technology Officer, CalSTRS

Prashant Mittal, Chief Information Officer, California Department of Motor Vehicles

Hillory Courtney, Managing Partner, Info-Tech Research Group

Timestamps:

0:00 Back at CalSTRS: the trust Prashant says bonded IT and business

2:25 Friends since 1999, and why that trust mattered when Prashant joined CalSTRS

9:09 "Your issues and your risk are my issue and my risk"

16:01 Wait for the business to ask, or act first? Prashant's five-minute pitch

26:03 Six weeks, 200-plus new hires, and the moment Prashant changed course

30:00 "I can't buy a tool and drop it on the table"

33:00 "AI is not making a decision for us"

51:20 Trust took years to build: why CalSTRS won't go all-AI with members

55:17 Different missions, 60 to 70% of the same problems: why agencies compare notes

57:09 "The idea is great, but now you have to operationalize it"

Earlier this year I sat down at the inaugural WRITA spring conference with Chuck Boyer (Assistant CIO, City of Phoenix, and WRITA Conference Chair), Nick Phillips (CISO, City of Boise), and Scott Magerfleisch (Executive Counselor, Info-Tech Research Group, former CIO, City of Greeley, CO).

A backup can be healthy.

A recovery can still fail.

Boise's infrastructure team brought in Info-Tech to build a real disaster recovery plan — not because anything had gone wrong, but because "we know what to do" was living in people's heads instead of on paper. 3.5 days in a room with IT staff only, no business units. They worked through 15 applications. The city has more than 200. What Nick took away wasn't about storage. It was watching application owners and managers realize that the thing they'd been calling a playbook couldn't be handed to someone else and executed.

Chuck has a phrase for why the necessary changes stall out anyway: organizational will. Scott's version of the same idea, applied to AI, is that you have to name the problem before you name the tool.

We also talked about:

• Why every ERP conversation turns into "while we're in here, let's redo the chart of accounts"
• Business relationship managers (BRMs), and getting to a department before they've already bought the product
• Public works asked the cyber team to come teach. So did the library. Lessons Learned.

Timestamps

 01:48 "Hire for fit, train for skill"
 04:58 Culture change dies the moment a leader asks the team to go first
 10:22 Why Boise brought in Info-Tech to build a real disaster recovery plan anyway
 12:25 200+ server-based apps. They got through 15.
 13:04 "We thought we had playbooks. I don't think we truly did."
 16:16 Technical debt, aging servers, and the organizational will it takes to touch them
 20:24 "We can't do AI for the sake of AI"
 22:46 The messy, ugly side of AI nobody's posting about on LinkedIn
 25:44 Phoenix's plan: council meetings, agendas, minutes and resolutions, all in an LLM
 30:05 Boise's BRMs
 32:46 Public works asked the cyber team to come teach. So did the library. Lessons Learned.
 36:21 A Colorado city sent over a million dollars to an attacker after a contractor's email was compromised
 40:24 "You're not competing with your neighbor"

Earlier this year I sat down at the inaugural WRITA spring conference with Jeff Scheetz (CIO, City of Avondale) and Zach Duguid (AI Engineering Manager, Polimorphic).

Jeff's answer to what he'd put in front of a room of local government CIOs isn't a success story.

It's the horror stories — the scary stuff nobody puts in the press release.

Most of this episode is the unglamorous work that prevents it. Zach walked through what Polimorphic does before an agent ever answers a resident: a Knowledge Base Health Check that seeds up to 500 questions against a city's own content, then reruns them weekly or monthly to confirm what the agent answers and which sources it pulled from.

We also talked about:

• Why pilots de-risk AI and then stall before they scale across departments
• Single sign-on inside the city, four or five logins outside it
• Jeff's next 18 months: consolidate, standardize, clean up after the growth

Timestamps
01:55 "I just got a new dog. How do I register him?" — the AI answers, then files the form
03:43 "We're not selling services. There's no checkout cart." So what is a city website for?
04:55 The caller doesn't know the address. They know the coffee shop. The map does the rest.
07:24 A water outage in Utah, live on the phone line the moment staff post it
09:14 Single sign-on inside the city. 4-5 logins outside it. Nobody's solved this.
10:22 30-40 departments, each with its own process — and the war against too many toggles
11:47 19 years in: how much security pain can you inflict before staff route around you?
12:56 "We had to move very quickly for years. Now we finally get to go clean it up."
14:14 Your chatbot is quoting agenda minutes from a decade ago — the check that catches it first
16:30 A 20-year employee retires. Where does the knowledge go, and can AI hold it?
18:18 Pilots de-risk AI. They don't scale it. Why Zach wants it treated as infrastructure.
19:28 Jeff's ask for the roundtable: not the AI wins, the horror stories

Recorded at the inaugural WRITA spring conference, this episode brings together Scott Conn (CIO, City of Mesa and WRITA chair), Mary Wynne (CEO, Fusion Learning Partners/PTI), and returning guest Chris Stewart (CRO, Freeit Data Solutions, former City of Austin CIO). They unpack how WRITA was built as an all-hands regional alternative to CIO-only clubs, and how leaders are handling local government IT budget cuts — through tools-first strategy, real partnerships over transactional vendors, transparent communication, and continued investment in professional development.

Guests

• Scott Conn, Chief Information Officer, City of Mesa, Arizona; Founder, WRITA
• Mary Wynne CEO, Fusion Learning Partners (Public Technology Institute)
• Chris Stewart Chief Revenue Officer, Freeit Data Solutions (former CIO, City of Austin)

Timestamps

(05:45) Scott’s problem with “CIOs-only clubs”—and the idea that became WRITA

(09:17) Four sponsors, one rule: bring an implementation—not a sales pitch

(15:36) Flat budgets, higher quotes—and why doing the same with less is now hard

(17:05) Tools first, people second: Mesa’s strategy for keeping services moving

(18:00) Two sentences. Fifteen minutes. Why only two vendors in ten earn the full meeting

(19:24) Before you buy another tool, are you using the one you already own?

(26:23) The rumor mill starts before the decision does

(27:00) Mesa’s budget glide path: 2% now instead of a drastic 15% later

(35:00) Accountability overcorrected—and then trust caught up

(37:23) “The best leaders are the best learners”

(42:07) The budget line Mary says leaders should think twice before cutting

#240: Cut 2% Now — or 15% Later | City of Mesa, Fusion Learning Partners & Freeit Data Solutions

“Even doing the same with less is really hard.” Chris Stewart, Scott Conn, and Mary Wynne on budget cuts, professional development, and finding more value in the tools you already own.

Episode Summary

850 members. Seven states. Two and a half years.

Scott Conn, Chief Information Officer, City of Mesa — built WRITA from a problem (like the best entrepreneurs!). In an Arizona CIO club, he asked why collaboration should stop at the CIO. Why couldn’t help desk staff, GIS specialists, engineers, and desktop teams learn from peers across the state? Everyone agreed. Then they voluntold Scott to go build it.

Chris Stewart, former Chief Information Officer, City of Austin & Chief Revenue Officer at Freeit Data Solutions — sees the pressure from both sides. Budgets are flat or shrinking, technology costs are climbing, and “even just doing the same with less is really hard.”

Mary Wynne, CEO, Fusion Learning Partners — is the person helping WRITA keep all of this moving. Through Fusion Learning Partners’ Catalyst Solutions Group, her team supports the day-to-day operations and conferences behind the organization. Fusion also leads the 55-year-old Public Technology Institute and the 45-year-old GOVIT Symposium—the nation’s longest-running IT conference for state and local government.

I sat down with all three at WRITA’s inaugural Spring Conference at the Mesa Convention Center. The conversation kept returning to one leadership test: before you make another cut, buy another platform, or cut professional development, have you found the value already inside your tools, partnerships, and people?

ps: don’t forget to join the 2026 WRITA Fall Summit in Salt Lake City, September 1st-3rd. Learn more here.

Guests

Scott Conn, Chief Information Officer, City of Mesa, Arizona; Founder, WRITA

Mary Wynne CEO, Fusion Learning Partners (Public Technology Institute)

Chris Stewart Chief Revenue Officer, Freeit Data Solutions (former CIO, City of Austin)

Timestamps

(05:45) Scott’s problem with “CIOs-only clubs”—and the idea that became WRITA

(09:17) Four sponsors, one rule: bring an implementation—not a sales pitch

(15:36) Flat budgets, higher quotes—and why doing the same with less is now hard

(17:05) Tools first, people second: Mesa’s strategy for keeping services moving

(18:00) Two sentences. Fifteen minutes. Why only two vendors in ten earn the full meeting

(19:24) Before you buy another tool, are you using the one you already own?

(26:23) The rumor mill starts before the decision does

(27:00) Mesa’s budget glide path: 2% now instead of a drastic 15% later

(35:00) Accountability overcorrected—and then trust caught up

(37:23) “The best leaders are the best learners”

(42:07) The budget line Mary says leaders should think twice before cutting

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Broward County has 31 cities, 67+ lines of business, and 14 IT managers that CIO Domenic DiLullo has to keep in sync - while a property tax measure heading to the ballot could reshape his entire budget.

Glenn Mack just took over as CTO of the North Carolina courts: 100 counties, 105 courthouses, from Murphy to Manteo. He walked in from 17 years in public safety and found the AI policy was… non-existent.

And Jon Minshew spent 30 years in North Carolina state government - CIO for the governor's office, and later the state's first Chief Customer Officer - before crossing over to Dell Technologies, where he now advises the same CIOs he used to sit alongside.

We put all three on one recording, and the conversation went somewhere most AI conversations never go: the invoice.

At one point I said I was hoping market forces would bring AI prices down over time. Dom cut me off mid-sentence: "I disagree. I wholeheartedly disagree." When a county CIO pushes back that hard on air, you listen to why.

Guests

Domenic DiLullo CIO, Broward County, Florida
Glenn Mack CTO, North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts
Jon Minshew Chief Strategist, Dell Technologies

Timestamps

(03:38) NC Courts overview: 100 counties, 105 courthouses, Odyssey eCourts
(05:05) Broward overview: 31 cities, 67–70 lines of business, AI investment
(08:43) Courts' AI readiness: "the policy was there was none"
(11:50) Legislative pressure, "just do AI"
(12:39) Broward's data foundation + two-year CAP policy, 30 use cases
(15:00) Token uncertainty vs budgets: "nobody wants that surprise bill
(18:54) The cab with no meter
(23:41) $40K server now $75K; no relief until 2030
(28:24) Jon's advising playbook: outcome-first workshops, quick wins
(30:31) Buy-in: directors, CFOs, chief justices - and lobbying for funding
(31:19) The skill-set gap; vendors working themselves out of a job
(36:36) "You can buy the car - but can you afford the car?"