Kevin Gilbertson is the Chief Information Officer for the State of Montana and a member of the cabinet. He has over three decades of experience in high-tech and business consulting, with more than 20 years focused on transforming customer experience. As Montana’s CIO, some of his key accomplishments include leading the state to be free of mainframes, coordinating a unified state IT strategy, and reorganizing Montana Central IT.
Transitioning from Private to Public Sector
I have spent significant time in the private sector, working for companies like RightNow Technologies, Socrata, and Oracle. I have served in various roles, such as developer, salesperson and solution consultant, and managed all of them. I have been in my current role for over four years. Before assuming this role, I worked for a small system integrator that focused on Oracle’s cloud customer experience solutions. I worked on enhancing CX for many large public and private sector customers – something that has shaped my thought processes at the State of Montana.
These experiences have added invaluable additions to my professional toolbox. This varied history has served me well. It has helped me in my current role focusing on finances, communicating vision, implementing strategies, and negotiating contracts with vendors.
Integrating Technology in the Government Sector
The state government has been slower in adopting new technologies due to the risk involved with citizen data. We must ensure we mitigate risk to the best of our ability.
The government has set guidelines for approaching vendors and procuring services. You must focus on the return on investment, except that, in the public sector, your return will not necessarily be only financial. Instead, we apply a framework that puts equal value on the value provided to both citizens and employees of the state.
The state is led by a team headed by Governor Gianforte, the former CEO and founder of RightNow Technologies, a CX SaaS company.
In his direction for IT, the governor has emphasized digitization with a focus on implementing AI to improve the citizen experience. We hope to bring this together in a portal called my.mt.gov. We are also focusing on reducing technical debt by replacing old, outdated systems with modern ones and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products.
My goal as a CIO is to ensure agencies have a secure technology framework with the tools necessary to empower government functions.
At the same time, we want to transition how we deliver services with a business consultant approach to becoming a better business partner to agencies. My experience as a consultant in CX firms has helped me lead from the front by working with some groups in a very hands-on fashion.
Other steps to improve the experience for both citizens and employees also include significant efforts to implement human-centered organizational change management. Customer success managers have been assigned to all agencies to manage relationships, and numerous approaches have been adopted regarding communication and coordination to deliver an improved customer experience.
Finally, I have initiated an annual strategy conference, where we invite IT agency leadership to set the strategy every other year. This group of leaders sets the strategy in the first year and discusses its execution in the second year, ensuring shared vision.
The Impact of AI in the Government Sector
The government has been focusing on implementing an AI approach for targeted use cases where we can establish clear guardrails and ensure a human is responsible for all work done by AI. At this time, I don’t believe AI is yet at the standard needed to perform sweeping enterprise programs.
I have simple goals for the impact of AI. For example, it is my hope that implementing generative AI can save up to fifteen minutes per employee. When you apply that time savings to our 16,000 employees, the time saved is significant.
My goal as a CIO is to ensure agencies have a secure technology framework with the tools necessary to empower government functions in the State of Montana. As a CIO, I aim to achieve AI literacy across the board, fostering community stewardship, developing a sandbox environment, and focusing on implementing AI in high-impact areas.
Best Practices Driving Government Communities
Focus on incremental steps, focus on areas where you can make an impact, and implement technology wherever possible.
Our team follows a commercial-off-the-shelf approach, where a custom-built product requires my approval. We aim to take advantage of the industry’s existing technologies, saving cost and resources needed to restructure the entire ecosystem. There are ongoing strategy discussions on using AI to assist functions such as assessing property taxes, enhancing CX, and delivering efficiency in enterprise IT.
Word of Advice for Peers
The IT landscape is constantly changing, so staying curious is essential. CIO roles are rapidly evolving, and there is a dire need to adapt new technologies to reach organizational goals and achieve long-term success.
AI is driving the development of high-end technologies, but that means greater interactions with end users. As a business consultant, understand your end users and help them achieve their business goals.
Communication skills are equally crucial for translating technical goals into business-driven ones, focusing on the agencies’ missions rather than the technology itself.
Foundational progress takes time. We aim for speed, but some areas need focus, such as hiring technical talent and ensuring they lead you to a great solution. CIOs ensure resources are ideally spent, enabling the agencies to remain mission-focused.
