Texas promotes AI and innovation chief to CIO role

Tony Sauerhoff, who’s been Texas’ interim chief information officer since January, when the governor appointed Amanda Crawford as his insurance commissioner, was on Friday named as her full-time replacement.

Most recently serving as Texas’ chief artificial intelligence and innovation officer, Sauerhoff now heads the state’s Department of Information Resources, where he’s tasked with all of the usual duties of a state’s top technology official: crafting a statewide technology strategy, offering “shared services” to be used across many agencies providing the public with a broad array of essential services and administering “technology procurement and contracting resources, and technology direction and guidance,” according to the department’s press materials.

In an email, Sauerhoff said Crawford provided “strong, foundational leadership,” work that included modernizing IT systems and boosting collaboration across agencies, that he hopes to build upon, “while continuing to support Texas’ public sector with secure, reliable and innovative technology that allows government to better serve Texans.”

Sauerhoff joined the Texas state government in 2022, first as its deputy chief information security officer, after a career that included six years with the Air Force, three years with the Marine Corps Reserve and five years with the U.S. courts system in New Orleans, where he served as a circuit IT security officer. According to a press release from Texas’ technology department, Sauerhoff has “more than 32 years of experience in information technology, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.”

As CIO of one of the nation’s largest states, Sauerhoff will manage a budget exceeding three-quarters of a billion dollars, a task complicated by technology’s rapid pace of development. “The pace of technology development and breakthroughs keeps advancing more and more quickly, especially lately,” he acknowledged in an email, when asked about how he’ll manage to keep the state’s technologies current while operating within Texas’ biennial budget cycle. He said agencies will need to “plan and prepare well in advance of deadlines” and to anticipate future needs before asking the legislature for funding.

Sauerhoff noted that his department also employs staff who help other agencies sketch out their modernization initiatives: “One of my goals is to increase awareness that DIR is available to help in this area. For example, at the end of last year, DIR hosted an IT Planning, Reporting, and Funding Cycle Webinar to help agencies start thinking through how to address this challenge.”

One of the technologies moving fastest — AI — plays a central role in Sauerhoff’s plans, though the state’s IT strategic plan observes that the state is challenged by “poor data quality” that “limits the reliability of analytics and AI models.” Many states, after breakthroughs in large language models in 2022 began exciting the public, have similarly reported being unprepared to make the most of the latest AI software. Sauerhoff said the Department of Information Resources is addressing its data issues “in increments,” and “as AI use cases are identified.”

But Texas’ public sector, he said, is becoming more capable in the realm of AI, moving “from pilot to execution.” State CIOs in many states are telling a similar story — the National Association of State Chief Information Officers last year reported that four in five of state governments were using AI tools as part of their daily work, and a quarter had begun receiving dedicated funding for AI. In January, Texas published an “AI data quality protocol” that includes a series of “practical actions” agencies can take to ready their data for AI, like employing “purpose-built solutions” to address technical issues like duplicative records, or defining “fairness metrics for AI-driven decisions” and publishing results quarterly to boost trust with the public.

Sauerhoff on Friday also reminded a reporter that “responsible data management” and “stronger services supported by data and AI” are included in the state’s IT strategic plan — AI seems to be embedded in the state government’s future: “DIR remains committed to supporting Texas government entities as they strengthen data practices and responsibly expand the use of AI.”