Tanya HannahWhat is on the CIO agenda for 2022 that will help enable and shape business aspirations for the best outcome? Coming out of pandemic, as we enter the new year, how are the CIOs planning to align their strategies and resources to launch digital projects faster, integrate systems quickly, and allow seamless and secure access to applications and data?
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Transcript
Sanjog Aul [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to CTN. To learn more about the show, please visit CIO talknetwork.com and the topic today, The 2022 CIO Agenda, which is 2022 CIO Agenda. Now, what are we talking about here? First of all, what we are hoping here is to looking at coming out of pandemic where we are entering the New Year. We are doing a lot of different things. We are looking at the AI, AR VR to transform business. We have the DNA that is changing in most organizations to digital. Then we have hybrid work environment becoming a norm. All of those things are happening
Sanjog Aul [00:00:43]:
but then how is it impacting the agenda for the CIOs? How are they taking their people, processes and technology and culture and the leadership and the budget, all of that and make them a cohesive force so that they create most value for the enterprise? That’s what we are here to discuss and I have with me Tanya Hannah, who’s the CIO with King County, Washington. Hey Tanya, how are you?
Tanya Hannah [00:01:11]:
Hi Sanjog. How are you doing today? So excited to be here.
Sanjog Aul [00:01:16]:
Absolutely. The pleasure is all mine. Now here, the discussion that we want to have, it’s a practitioner’s viewpoint, essentially. So a lot of people put out a lot of posts and discussions on the agenda of the CIO and not one discussion, not cover it all but there are certain patterns that we have seen. The last year or two has been an interesting journey for all of us. What is your basic sentiment behind tackling 2022, putting things behind you, learning lessons and applying them to make it a more cautiously optimistic year. What is the sentiment?
Tanya Hannah [00:02:00]:
That is such a great question. After two years within this pandemic, I think we are all ready for and quite optimistic about 2022 for me and I think all of our CIOs and technologists throughout the world, we’re all excited about how technology is central to the digital businesses that we’re all encountering, whether it’s private sector or for, in my case, public sector and technology is so ingrained within our ecosystem and our daily lives that we tend to take for granted and 2022 is going to be an awesome, awesome year for tech.
Sanjog Aul [00:02:52]:
Now, given you are in a government as well as the commercial sector, they are serving the business.
Tanya Hannah [00:02:58]:
Yes.
Sanjog Aul [00:03:00]:
Is your discussion which was maybe towards the end of the year or beginning of the year when you enter your boss’s office, what has that, where has that gone? Is it a different set of agenda items? Is it a different approach to how we are going to lead our organization? What are you seeing, because, see, that’s where, while you create an agenda but execution eats strategy for lunch sometimes.
Tanya Hannah [00:03:28]:
Absolutely, I think what we see, whether in commercial CIOs, board of directors or even in government with elected officials, they all understand that digital is key to driving whether it’s revenue, market share, growth or even connecting with customers. Some of the concerns that still resonate. One is cybersecurity, privacy, the enterprise risk. I’m sure that is among the top three concerns for any CIO. What we saw in 2021 around ransomware attacks that really rose to the levels of public consciousness because of the colonial pipeline or the JBS meatpacking really cemented that is a concern but even more so in government because I think there was earlier in the year a cyber attack on a city in Florida where the water supply could have potentially poisoned the community because the hackers had changed some of the chemical levels in the water. It was caught before there was any damage
Tanya Hannah [00:04:56]:
but certainly cyber is one of our top things. Another area that I see resonating, particularly with business partners, is how do we think about robotics, process automation, RPA and really trying to eliminate some of those routine mundane tasks and using and helping our employees to become very more efficient and productive, particularly in government. In a lot of cases we’re doing less, we have to do more with less. Other areas that we could potentially see that I’m pretty excited about is as we see IoT and the use of AI and smart cities, networking and that connectivity, whether it’s satellites, I think SpaceX Starlink launched some additional satellites recently, expansion of 5G. I think those are all particular game changers that we’re going to see happen.
Sanjog Aul [00:06:20]:
So in your organizational context, so of course you mentioned about a few innovations that might disrupt the way we live our lives and while it might change the lives of the citizens, you, your organization as the government entity which is supposed to provide for the citizens, the different things that they’re looking to do to be able to make their life easier. Are you going to under promise and deliver a little less than before because you are constrained, or would you go ahead and promise them the moon and make your team work even harder because you have a lot of catch up to do.
Tanya Hannah [00:07:03]:
Innovation will reign supreme. It has to. Organizations that cannot adapt will just fall by the wayside. Especially when we think about sustainability and this whole movement to like for example, net carbon footprint within government, we’re moving to all electric fleets. We need to be able to take the telemetry data and tell buses, when to charge, how long will they charge? You’re seeing the bigger push out there, just how businesses, whether it’s in the airline industry, I was recently a car commercial was talking about their net carbon and sustainability footprint. We will have to innovate and so having our teams ready to deliver is crucial and data is a key imperative to us having the ability to move quickly. How our organizations gain the insight because that data will allow us to create new products and services or grow additional revenue streams or in my case help to streamline operations to be efficient and operate at scale because the county has over 1600 buses and in the next, within the next five years it’s all going to be electric.
Tanya Hannah [00:08:46]:
So we have to continually be ready to innovate and ensuring that the talent on our teams have the skill sets and that we have the ability to also attract and retain talent is crucial within that space.
Sanjog Aul [00:09:11]:
Now we are all going to be moving forward with the idea that we want to innovate and then we also want to be able to keep our people motivated and also treat them with empathy because they are still, most of them are still struggling with some of the other personal issues related to healthcare because of the pandemic. Let’s take a quick break listeners. We’ll be right back and Tanya, I would have a question here where we spoke about innovation reign supreme and we are going to try to do new, more or different things to keep moving ahead as government organization in your case and many other organizations in their own right, whatever they want to achieve but what happens to the very people, the ones who are going to be executing on it, they have not truly come out of this pandemic related health issues or an extended family health issue. So there is a lot of other commitments that they are juggling with if you’re going to increase the mother load on them and even though you are empathetic, the reality is they will be overwhelmed by this catching up work to do or more innovation and putting more on their plate. How are we planning to balance all this so that all the ideas that you create don’t come crashing down because you ask too much from them together. Please stay tuned listeners.
Sanjog Aul [00:10:37]:
We’ll be right back.
Sanjog Aul [00:11:36]:
Welcome back. So Tanya, we could go on an innovation streak. We can go gung ho with our new projects besides the ones which you are anyway supposed to continue and many other ideas could start floating around. While that is great when done in the ivory tower or the management layer, when people who are mortal human beings who are dealing with healthcare issues or other extended family issues because of the pandemic, that problem has not gone away yet and when you add more to their plate at some point that would create breakdown, it will create overwhelm, it would create demotivation, and it’ll create long, diminishing returns. So how do you plan on delivering results and promising only as much as you can deliver to the management?
Tanya Hannah [00:12:28]:
Sanjog that is an issue that we’re tackling within my organization, as I’m sure all other organizations are struggling with recently. Whether it’s been in the New York Times or the Harvard Business Review, et cetera, mental health concerns have grown as a result of the pandemic. We’re certainly offering more resources around mental health and it’s actually taking the forms of where we’re doing it virtually and connecting employees to resources similar to telemedicine. Priorities matter and I think it was Justin Trudeau who said the slowest that we’re going right now is also the fastest. We will not go any slower than what we’re going now and what I’m seeing, the priorities have grown exponentially as well. My organization, we’re treating our tech workers and allowing them to be remote with you can pop into our offices at your leisure.
Tanya Hannah [00:13:52]:
Some of it is driven because of the pandemic and new variants. Some of it is also because our employees are experiencing issues with child care education, with schools open or, and or closed and one of the things that I’ve seen is we’ve started to lose women out of our teams because of all of the personal issues that are surrounding and we don’t want to do that. We want to attract and keep the talent that we have because we need them to help us deliver upon all of these priorities. Where I see priorities going, particularly within my organization, King County, Washington, is things that are related to sustainability and the environment. Those priorities are moving forward we have to be able to unlock data to help sustain where the county government wishes to go. I think also when it comes to priorities, organizations are looking to unlock their revenue streams, grow market share and tech has to position the organizations to be there. So what we’re going to see is a continuation.
Tanya Hannah [00:15:39]:
Things that don’t matter as much to the business may fall to the wayside, but we are going to see hybrid workplaces and what do you do with physical office buildings and setting your employees up to be able to work from home, whether that’s providing stipends or ensuring that they have a great home office that is definitely on the CIO agenda.
Sanjog Aul [00:16:09]:
Now you talk about, of course, you said AI, VR, et cetera. Those kind of things are popping up. Is there an application that you are seeing or not? One application, maybe multiple applications where you are going to exploit these technologies and these are not just science experiments anymore, something that you plan to deploy in the short term or midterm?
Tanya Hannah [00:16:32]:
Absolutely. The county is using currently AR-VR to help train our staff, whether it’s in our wastewater treatment facilities or in vehicle maintenance, as we begin to shift from moving working on diesel buses to electric battery buses, AI is definitely a key driver. We are using it particularly as we think about social programs. Unlocking the data to understand the implications of how a homeless individual is interacting with mental health and behavioral services, along with their physical health, to transportation and interactions with within the court system. We’re combining all of that data to begin to target program and design programs specifically for these individuals to have better outcomes. We’re also exploring, which should be interesting, elections is a top of the mind issue and
Tanya Hannah [00:18:00]:
we’re actually exploring how to potentially move elections online and what would that look like with blockchain and quantum computing? Especially when you think about signature verification on a ballot, how do you not change and ensure that the ballot cast is actually the ballot? Those are some of the things working on there and I think we’re also going to see the expansion of cryptocurrency. If you start seeing government looking at cryptocurrency, it’s probably a pedestrian technology tomorrow.
Sanjog Aul [00:18:53]:
So now with all these different things that you mentioned, I’m not sure if is it a plug and play or you had to develop talent or you have to get outside consulting firms to come and help you. How are you building this capability because it’s disruptive and it’s going to require people to learn how to handle the affairs that they have on a daily basis differently. How is that site coming along? Is the government funding these cool features enough that you are able to put them in timely and test them and actually start get them adopted? Are the people who you have internally trainable in these new areas or you have to rely on outside capability because after some time you will have to bring it in house. I’m hoping for so that tax dollars are best spent. So how is that workforce capability aspect being tackled?
Tanya Hannah [00:19:54]:
Actually it’s a combination. Our workforce is super talented, we’re up to date on the latest technology and we continually invest in our employees to learn. Even throughout the entire pandemic, employees still have had the opportunity to take training, et cetera. We do a lot of work with startups and vendor partners who help us really think how do you operate at scale because that is critically important to our work and they will also provide some in house training but then it’s also about recruitment because our organization is doing some of the latest in technology, particularly emerging tech. People do want to come work for us, right because they’re looking for work life balance. We also offer a remote work environment and they can work on technology that has a direct impact on communities. You can see it daily and that is a very strong proposition that people are attracted to.
Sanjog Aul [00:21:35]:
So Tanya, we are all trying to make some big changes and maybe we have to make some foundational changes to bring about the innovation and disruption. It could be people, process, policy, culture, leadership, technology, you name it but we may do some. Some companies would do in one way, another would be doing in another way but if we were to position our respective organizations for sustained innovation, disruption, evolution, what should those foundational changes be and among those, which ones are you well on your way to implement?
Tanya Hannah [00:22:19]:
Sanjog that is a great question. I think all organizations are grappling with one of the top priorities for me and my team, my leadership team is on wellness out of the pandemic. Employees really care about their mental well being as well as their physical well being and organizations that can offer stress management programs, for example, or providing fitness is definitely a way to attract talent. I also think during this time we’re also seeing an increased need for mentorship where we’re pairing people within our teams internally and externally to help not only within King county learn about the programs and the tech, but also externally to help us be our best selves. Something else that is really key is having this work life balance the pandemic has and we talked earlier about just all of the priorities that we all have and this increased need to go faster, deliver at a quicker pace and at scale. Work life balance is mattering more to employees regularly. I have employees that asked or that will say to me they are so glad that they don’t have to commute because they’re dealing with their child care situations and they feel like these flexible work arrangements are helping them be able to do a good job for us, but also help them in their personal lives
Tanya Hannah [00:24:35]:
and finally, I think this continued need for training and development opportunities, getting in and working on new technology, we’re doing it at scale and faster than we’ve ever done it before and there is so much to learn. Some of the things that I’m seeing just within my own organization is some of these lower level tasks that people used to want to hold on to, they’re like, hey, can we give that to somebody else to do because we want to be positioned where we can really work on the things that bring and add value right to our organization.
Sanjog Aul [00:25:25]:
That’s definitely the case. So now one interesting area is security. So when you think about Tanya, all the changes that we are trying to bring about, plus the pandemic also created a southern region for us to go and have people work in a hybrid work environment. This would create a lot of security risk and interestingly there is also a forecast around outsiders, the people with mal intent trying to target critical infrastructure at city, state and government level. So while you would go on that innovation bandwagon, but you do not want a third party which has got not the best interest in mind. Rip apart all the things that you do. So how are you planning working alongside your security team and your government officials and the policymakers and anything else that you can do to ensure that your fort is secure while you look to make it cool and make it stronger. Please stay tuned listeners,
Sanjog Aul [00:26:32]:
we’ll be right back and talk to Tanya and get her input.
Sanjog Aul [00:27:08]:
Welcome back. So Tanya, we already know there are a lot of initiatives going on at the government level for yourself and many others and even in commercial organizations but everyone is concerned about the issues related to information security, cyber risk, ransomware, you name it. All of those people who are looking at an opportunity to find the vulnerabilities in your processes and or the fact that you’re in state of flux or in a state of crisis and cause harm. So how are you planning to make sure that you minimize the damage that is you bounce back quickly if at all there is an attack and also prevent whatever you can, wherever you can.
Tanya Hannah [00:27:54]:
As I stated earlier, cybersecurity, privacy and enterprise risk would certainly be in the top three things that CIOs are looking at. A crucial part is our employees and people because normally ransomware tends to occur because our employees like click things that they shouldn’t. The things that we’re looking at here at King county, as I’m sure other organization is purity awareness training and being more mindful of not clicking malicious links and things of that nature but other things that we are doing is really thinking about tabletop exercises and understanding how would we respond to events that are occurring out in or that may potentially occur out in our organization. We’re also doing more to ensure that we don’t lose data, that kind of data loss protection and ensuring that data is not sitting out in places that it shouldn’t even for internal sabotage because I’m sure a lot of organizations, including government, creates a lot of intellectual property that is extremely valuable and so we’re putting protections in place to secure those particular assets which are extremely valuable to our organizations. We’re going to see more of that occur within the 2022 CIO agenda.
Sanjog Aul [00:30:06]:
Now that said, if you’ve taken care of that, you’ve spoken a little bit about the process changes, et cetera, and the security, would you say there is supposed to be a reliance on external partners which you already said you have, but do we know if they are ready to work with you and also have their own act together because their own employees would be facing the same issues. So two entities who are both not necessarily struggling but trying to get by these interesting times, you got to be able to identify which companies would be good partners for the time being or for the long haul, given where they are. So what’s your approach to building and nurturing a very specific set of critical partner relationships in 2022 because you will need the reliability.
Tanya Hannah [00:31:01]:
Strategic partners are so critical to organizations. The county has a number of them and we continue to grow and really it’s based upon mutual trust, trust that those organizations care about my business, which happens to be government and the 64 lines of businesses that we support in helping us deliver how we think about our Enterprise Architecture, the ecosystems that we’re building, and how do we leverage the data that we have collected to build new products and services. Those particular partnerships are allowing us to operate at scale and to move into areas that I don’t think the government imagined even three, four years ago. We’re also seeing, based upon this mutual trust, how our vendors are coming up with new ways of doing business and how they are bringing forward some of their innovations and how we can incorporate it into our business. I’m seeing a lot of this growth in our relationships that I’m not sure I saw prior to the pandemic.
Sanjog Aul [00:32:52]:
Okay, so the last thing which I would like to ask you and which is perhaps the most important things is the leadership style and the mindset the CIOs need to wear for 2022 so that they can help make the most of this year and create the most value and more importantly, take their people along so that each of the individuals and the group as a whole creates most value. The IT group as a group create most value for the business.
Tanya Hannah [00:33:26]:
I think technology leaders are business leaders and you have to be a business leader and it’s how do you leverage that tech to connect people to the business and help grow the revenues and the way that we’re approaching our problem solving is around the business and I think that has been an enjoyable shift that has been made. Something else that might be overlooked, but I also think it’s an expression of gratitude to our teams for all of the work that they are doing and continue to do. We do know that employees that feel valued and empowered and connected to the mission will go above and beyond and in the ways that they do their work and I think in 2022 that will be super critical to attracting and retaining talent.
Sanjog Aul [00:34:47]:
On behalf of the show and our listeners. Thank you so much once again, Tanya, for sharing your insights on the 2022 CIO agenda. Thanks so much.
Tanya Hannah [00:35:00]:
Thank you. 2022 is going to be an amazing year, especially for CIOs.
Sanjog Aul [00:35:10]:
Absolutely. God bless. So listeners, hope you enjoyed. Got some nuggets from what Tanya shared, what she’s doing in her own organization as a CIO. Please join us and download our podcast, connect with us on social media and keep doing the good work. Thank you so much again and this is Sanjog Aul signing off from CIO Talk Network. We will be talking to you soon next week, take care.
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