Alex Z. Pettit was appointed as the first Chief Information Officer with the State of Oklahoma in April, 2010, by Governor Brad Henry, and was reappointed by Governor Mary Fallin in January, 2011. He serves as the Cabinet Secretary of Information Technology and Telecommunications under the current administration. Mr. Pettit manages the Information Services Division (ISD) of the Office of State Finance (OSF). The CIO has responsibility related to all information technology and telecommunications systems for all state agencies under the provisions of the Oklahoma Information Services Act; as well as increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the State’s technology services through elimination of redundancy and inefficient practices under the provisions of the Information Technology Consolidation and Coordination Act. Prior to joining the State of Oklahoma, Mr. Pettit joined Brown University in 2009 as an independent consultant responsible for project management of the planning, coordinating and execution of rapid development of a fully functional and tested disaster recovery plan and the coordination of the renovation of Brown University’s sole data center. Prior to Brown, he worked for Marsh McLennan in the areas of BCP strategy and vision, disaster recovery and business resumption planning, focusing on the proactive preparation of people to effectively survive through and recover from a major crisis event. Mr. Pettit worked with public and private organizations regarding technology management activities, including consolidation, governance and other IT practices. Some of these organizations include: the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, the Disaster Recovery Institute International, the International City Managers Association, the Texas City Managers Association, the Society for Information Management and the American Institute of Technology Professionals. He has been involved with the local Innotech Conference, the Oklahoma City Chamber and the Oklahoma Municipal League as well as activities related to cloud computing, broadband and LTE initiatives for the State. He has been actively involved in continuity of operations planning, crisis leadership, emergency operations center design and civil defense planning in Texas and has personally managed and supported terms through major crisis events. He has global industry, government and Big 4 consulting experience and is a recognized leader in Enterprise Architecture. As the first CIO for the State of Oklahoma, he has been featured in numerous publications. He has directed both industry and consulting organizations in diverse roles as a chief technology officer, vice president and BCP service line leader, senior manager and regional director of technology and telecommunications. Mr. Pettit has received the Best of Texas Award for IT Leadership, the Public Technology Institute IT Leadership Award and the Society for Information Management IT Executive of the Year Award for his leadership. Mr. Pettit was recently named in the 2012 Top 25 Information Managers list at Information-Management.com for being a successful and engaging role model and example of leadership. Mr. Pettit is a published author on IT Leadership in Studies in E-Government, Government Technology Magazine, Texas Technology Magazine, the Journal for Enterprise Architecture and most recently, the SIM Guide to Enterprise Architecture (2009). Mr. Pettit completed undergraduate coursework at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside and received an MBA from Loyola University of Chicago. He is currently working toward completion of a PhD in Interdisciplinary Information Sciences at the University of North Texas. Less   View all posts