As the Chief Information Officer, what are some of your key roles and responsibilities that you have on a daily basis at the State of Minnesota?

Tarek Tomes,Commissioner of Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) and the State of Minnesota's Chief Information Officer (CIO).

Tarek Tomes,Commissioner of Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) and the State of Minnesota's Chief Information Officer (CIO).

Tarek Tomes serves as the Commissioner of Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) and the State of Minnesota's Chief Information Officer (CIO). With over 25 years of experience in managing technology innovation across diverse industries, in national, international, and public and private sector operations, Tomes brings his expertise to champion innovative digital government that works for all. Prior to this role, Tomes served as the Chief Innovation Officer and former Chief Information Officer at the City of St. Paul, where he was responsible for managing ongoing process improvements, supporting human-centered design, and increasing the overall effectiveness of city services and resources. His experience also includes six years as an Assistant Commissioner of Minnesota IT Services, where he created several nation-leading Information Technology sourcing agreements for 33,000+ user utility services statewide, including the first cloud-based public sector statewide service offering in the nation. Before joining state service, Tomes spent over 15 years working for global private sector technology organizations, including British Telecom and Control Data Systems. Tomes received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland and attended Graduate School for Business Management at Boston University.

1. As the Chief Information Officer, what are some of your key roles and responsibilities that you have on a daily basis at the State of Minnesota? In my role as the CIO for the State of Minnesota, I lead efforts to provide the best possible IT solutions and customer service to the people of Minnesota and our business partners. At MNIT, our mission is to partner to deliver secure, reliable technology solutions. Going one step beyond that, we strive to create an innovative digital government that works for all.

This year, we rolled out a new strategic plan that will help MNIT design the government that Minnesotans need tomorrow, centering on customer experience, cybersecurity, operational excellence, and a Connected Culture.

Our strategic objectives and initiatives are data-driven, with a commitment to sharing measurable outcomes. By building our capacity to adapt, the plan enables us to navigate the complexities and unknowns of technology, fostering collaboration and customer-centric solutions.

"We're centering our work around the individual and their experiences, so we can leverage emerging technology with the intention to connect Minnesotans to the services that will improve their lives."

It's my job as a leader to ensure we have the tools, resources, and know-how within MNIT to carry out that plan.

2. The technologies that enhance our organizations and our lives are more powerful—and more essential—than ever before. Forward-thinking organizations, including governments, understand the technological forces that surround them and look for ways to harness them for the benefit of citizens and constituents alike. Your views on this. The state of Minnesota strives to harness the power of technology to deliver services and interactions the people of Minnesota deserve from their government. Every time that our customers, end users, clients, and partners interact with us, they should feel their time, energy, and needs are valued.

We regularly ask ourselves and our partners, "How might we meet Minnesotans where they are at? How might we provide agility to Minnesotans in how they interact with government?"

The answers to these questions require us to embody excellence and put people at the forefront of the business of technology. We're centering our work around the individual and their experiences, so we can leverage emerging technology with the intention to connect Minnesotans to the services that will improve their lives.

We really believe some of the emerging technologies like AI could be a force multiplier. We think there's large potential, and we'll keep pursuing advancement being mindful of safety and security.

3. Many publicly funded agencies and organizations continue to rely on decades-old processes to accomplish their tasks. How does the modernization and digital transformation of such processes reduce handling delays, thereby securing and increasing the efficiency of the whole process? As the digital landscape changes, our role is to promote services that leverage the strengths of automation, AI, live chat, and data virtualization. Like many organizations, the State of Minnesota is incredibly excited about AI technologies and generally-speaking, see them as providing tremendous value for our workforce and for Minnesotans.

With AI, there is incredible opportunity. It will give us back the time that we need to address complex things that only humans can solve. AI frees up space and time that we spend doing tedious, error-prone work.

To give you an example, in 2020, MNIT introduced robotics process automation (RPA) at the state's service desk. A process that took the Minnesota Department of Health's human resources (HR) department 2-3 hours to complete took only 2 minutes with RPA.

Specifically, when a new state employee is hired, RPA works behind the scenes to automatically create an account and email address for their main system. When an employee leaves the state, RPA automatically disables and removes access to their email account on their last day/time of employment. After an agency's retention period passes, the RPA process deletes the account and mailbox.

There are opportunities like this across the state, and we're working with our business partners to identify projects that can truly make an impact and improve the lives of Minnesotans.

4. What would be your piece of advice for your fellow peers and leaders? Don't underestimate emerging technology and know it's okay to take some chances. It's okay to innovate, take small steps, and prototype. Make sure you're listening to all layers of your organization but push to find new and exciting solutions.