Q&A: Vermont CIO Denise Reilly-Hughes Weighs Citizen Needs During Cloud Journey

Microsoft began building on its customer success model. It was taking the concept of technology use and adoption and turning it into a conversation about customer-driven outcomes, user experience and usability. That resonated with me. It was a way to translate the complexities of technologies into a user experience outcome. If you looked at the landscape, it was something that we were all struggling with.

It uncovered opportunities to help drive change and improve services for the public. I saw that firsthand at Microsoft. Before the pandemic, many states in New England had already adopted a hybrid cloud model, and so the question was how to maintain public services while working remotely.

STATETECH: When it comes to Vermont and its cloud journey, how are you balancing hybrid cloud?

REILLY-HUGHES: Now that you are using cloud technologies, how do you maximize that to keep information and data and people and identities secure while at the same time making service more available?

We have two priorities for the state of Vermont: One is internal operations, and the other is the supportability and the modernization of the state enterprise. At the state level, we have a number of ongoing modernization projects. We have very strong partnerships with our state agencies, and we work together to align these priorities to the benefits of Vermonters. We are reforming unemployment insurance; we have a new DMV system going live. We are digitizing our services while at the same time providing the level of service that residents have always expected when they need to come into an office.

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And within our priorities when it comes to hybrid, we continue to harden our cyber footprint. As we expand into the cloud, that becomes a deeper conversation, along with what touch that footprint. When we look holistically at security controls, we look at data privacy and artificial intelligence. AI is a partner in that conversation, along with cybersecurity. As we look at the cloud journey that we are on, it is critically important to Vermont’s success to look at the maturity we have achieved right now and where we need to go for the next phase in the journey.

Vermont is a small state, and we have a strong, supportive team working to make that happen. On the internal side, we are hitting the next phase of maturity as an organization itself. We are only six years young now, and we have spent those first six years in what I would call startup mode. And we are doing a lot and covering a lot and meeting the statutory obligations of the agency. How do you define the next phase? We define that as our operation maturity phase, which aligns very closely to where we are in our cloud journey as well. We are resetting and maturing our baseline standards around core enterprise services. As we add layers of technology, it becomes easier to pull AI into that conversation.

STATETECH: Can you explain where Vermont is on producing a better citizen experience? Many states, for example, are planning or introducing uniform identity and access management platforms.

REILLY-HUGHES: We take an approach where we consider and acknowledge that we still do have legacy technologies that won’t necessarily align to where we are going. We need to provide an experience for Vermonters that is consistent enough while driving to a single experience. We are working toward that. We are where we want to be right now in our maturity journey. We are making methodical decisions alongside our partner agencies in government to ensure that we are doing the right thing while not changing too fast and making unintended mistakes along the way. Going back to our cloud journey, we are very concerned about the privacy and security of Vermonters’ information and access to that information. It is critically important to get this right.

Introducing AI into the Vermonter experience conversation creates a level of complexity that must be considered before we go live. Everyone feels like they want to be further along than they are, and we want to be where Vermonters need us to be.

STATETECH: Given that Vermont is a small state, do you talk at all to your state government neighbors about technology issues?

REILLY-HUGHES: We do. The New England states are very well connected. New York has a new CIO on board, and we already have had a chance to meet. Organizations like NASCIO also help to create some alignment, especially where there can be turnover. I feel fortunate that I’ve had a chance to work with government IT leaders for quite some time. We try to mirror each other’s successes where we can and support each other’s journeys as peers.