Panelist Interview - Mike Cannon
Stafford County has a population of 150,000, which makes it the third fastest growing County in Virginia with a population that has more than doubled since the year 2000. Stafford County has over 1,000 employees including Public Safety, Public Works, Parks and Recreation, Planning and Zoning, Treasurer's Office, Human Resources, Finance, and IT -How would you describe your mission as the CTO of Stafford County, Virginia?
To deliver high quality, efficient and cost effective technologies to support the mission of County departments and overall to improve services for employees, residents and businesses in Stafford County.
-As the CTO for for Stafford County, Virginia of roughly the last three years, what has been your biggest lesson learned or takeaway thus far? Or, what are the main challenges you encounter as the CTO of Stafford County?
My tenure at Stafford County is nearly three years and in that time I have been impressed with the IT team and how much they are able to support the County with limited budget we have. The rapid growth in the County has led to increasing demands on IT, which has forced us to make some major improvements to our technology infrastructure, including SANs, Backup, extending our fiber network and moving more applications to the cloud. One major project in the future will be will be a new ERP.
-What technologies has the Stafford County been implementing to make it a smarter community?
We have a partnership with the Center for Innovative Technologies (CIT) to develop a plan for our new town center called "Downtown Stafford," which we expect to begin the RFP for its construction in the Fall of 2019. CIT will be assisting the County to develop a technology plan, financial plan, operating plan, and information governance plan for Downtown Stafford, which we will make part of the construction RFP with the vision of making this area a model smart community for Virginia.
-What is your vision of a smart city?
Last year, I wrote an article about the subject that can be found through the following link:
-As you look a few years out, what technology or trends particularly excite you?
AI and Machine learning are definitely ones that have a lot of potential and will change our work lives and personal lives. I also am excited about how block chain can be used in local government especially for the creation of records for transactions and for critical documents like deeds, and other land-use applications. -Anything we missed or other questions/answer you'd like to add?
I think it's important to note the role of the CIO/CTO is constantly evolving at a more rapid pace than we have ever seen. It's more important than ever to be flexible and agile and to invest in your IT team and provide them with the training and tools they need to excel.
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