Thoughts on technology, leadership, security, infrastructure, automation, and the systems between them.
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Leadership
Three months down, seven to go! Just completed my third month of the North Carolina Certified Government Chief Information Officer (CGCIO) program at the UNC School of Government. This month's focus was IT governance, strategy, artificial intelligence, and personal leadership. And one theme kept coming back throughout...
Cybersecurity
What if the information we're protecting today becomes readable tomorrow? Not because someone stole a password or bypassed a firewall, but because the mathematics protecting that information is no longer enough. Welcome to Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC). For decades, technologies like RSA and elliptic curve...
Leadership
One of the most important skills in IT leadership has nothing to do with technology. It’s learning how to talk about technology to people who don’t live in our world. Think about a box of cereal. When you walk down the grocery aisle, the front of the box doesn’t lead with a paragraph explaining every ingredient, how...
Leadership
One of the themes that continues to stand out to me through the NC CGCIO program is how much the role of technology leadership has changed. Being an IT leader today isn’t just about keeping the network up, protecting systems, replacing hardware, or implementing the next piece of technology. Those things still matter...
Leadership
This month continued to challenge how I think about technology leadership. One idea in particular stuck with me: technology should not be the starting point of the conversation. The mission should be. As IT leaders, it is easy to talk about infrastructure, cybersecurity, cloud platforms, applications, integrations, and...
Technology
One lesson from my CGCIO journey has made me rethink what it means to call a technology project “complete.” Installed is not the same as implemented. I've seen this cycle more than once in IT. A request comes in for a new system, service, or integration. IT gets to work. We build the infrastructure, configure...
Cybersecurity
There’s a growing reality in IT that we don’t talk about enough. The hardest part of troubleshooting today isn’t fixing the problem. It’s figuring out where the problem actually lives. Hybrid environments have changed everything. On prem systems. Cloud workloads. SaaS platforms. VPN tunnels. Identity providers...
Leadership
Spend enough time in technology and you start to notice something interesting. The people who make the biggest impact in IT are not always the ones who know the most commands, the most programming languages, or the deepest architecture diagrams. Technical skill matters, but it is not the skill that ultimately defines...
Leadership
There is a mindset that quietly follows many of us from K 12 into higher education IT. Block it. Filter it. Shut it down. Social media gets restricted. Gaming is immediately labeled a distraction. Streaming is allowed only if it fits a narrow definition of “educational.” But here is the question we need to ask...
Leadership
Most IT leaders recognize this moment instantly. A challenge surfaces somewhere in the organization. It matters. It carries risk. It needs to be solved. And instead of landing with the group that owns the function, a figurative sticky note gets placed on IT’s desk that simply says, “Make it happen.” IT is often chosen...
Technology
With ice storms and winter weather impacting power and connectivity across large parts of the country, this is a good reminder that business continuity planning is not just a compliance exercise. It is a real world capability that gets tested when conditions are less than ideal. When power is lost, can your systems and...
Technology
This is a touchy topic for me, because I am deeply rooted in customer service and the value of human connection. I do not want students or employees to ever feel like they are being pushed off to a robot instead of being helped by a real person. But I am also realistic about how help desks actually operate. Most of us...
Leadership
We often describe portals, forms, and workflows as self service. The assumption is that technology makes things faster, easier, and more efficient. In reality, many of these systems simply move the friction from the institution to the person trying to get help. I recently watched a simple request turn into a multi week...
Leadership
One of the most misunderstood parts of modern IT leadership is that every meaningful technology project depends on the people outside of IT just as much as the people inside it. The challenge is that many non technical leaders unintentionally pull back from the early planning because they assume their job title exempts...
Leadership
For years, we’ve talked about automation like it was the finish line. You build the workflow, write the script, and let it repeat. But now we’re entering something new: Agentic AI, where systems can plan, decide, and act with minimal human direction. Imagine an AI that doesn’t just send you alerts, but actually detects...
Leadership
Have we really designed our systems for the people we serve, or just for the people who have always been here? Higher education is now serving five generations of students at once, and each brings a different expectation of what “great service” looks like. There’s the traditional student who grew up online and expects...
Technology
Have you ever stopped to calculate how much value you gain from just 10 minutes saved each day? At first, it doesn’t sound like much. But those 10 minutes a day add up to roughly 60 hours a year. For many organizations, that could mean over $2,000 in value saved per employee. When multiplied across a team or...
