Tennessee CIO Stephanie Dedmon announces retirement

Stephanie Dedmon, who’s served as Tennessee’s chief information officer for the past six years, will retire next July, officials confirmed on Monday.

Dedmon, who joined the state government in 2005 after 15 years with the professional services firm Accenture, will step down to spend more time with her family, a spokesperson with the Department of Finance and Administration told StateScoop. The state has not yet named her replacement.

News of Dedmon’s retirement was first reported by Government Technology.

As state CIO, Dedmon led the Strategic Technology Solutions division of the administration department. She helped advance the state’s work in automation technologies and generative artificial intelligence. At a technology conference last September, Dedmon told StateScoop in a video interview that robotic process automation had been deployed across 16 agencies. She also said an “AI partner vendor experience day” had convened 300 attendees, including 23 vendors, who showcased how AI might improve operations inside the government.

“The goal is just to work with our agencies to automate as many growth processes that we can to relieve those employees to do more value-added tasks,” Dedmon told StateScoop last year. “It’s about making the work more meaningful and giving savings in terms of time back to the agency.”

Before becoming state CIO in October 2018, Dedmon served nearly three years as deputy CIO. Before that, she spent four years as the agency’s director of business solutions delivery. For nearly seven years she served as director of Project Edison, a consolidation of 20 systems into a new enterprise resource planning system.

Before joining the Tennessee state government in March 2005, she spent 15 years at Accenture, leaving as an associate partner with the firm’s government business.