Colorado hires former ACF official to serve as principal director for AI architecture

The Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology has hired Jane Yang, the former chief artificial intelligence officer for the federal Administration for Children and Families, to serve as the state’s principal director for AI architecture.

Yang, who joined the state this month, according to OIT’s website, served in a number of roles at the federal agency within Department of Health and Human Services before departing last month. Along with serving as chief artificial intelligence officer from November 2024 through June of this year, her other roles included state technology relations lead, acting director of digital service and a lead adviser for AI and data.

At ACF, Yang worked on the launch a model-agnostic enterprise generative AI platform that helped teams across the federal agency to create AI assistants tailored to their workflows. The platform also reportedly facilitated the secure integration of large language model capabilities into custom applications. She led ACF’s first enterprise data strategy and kicked off its “AI street sense” program, which helped employees better understand when AI can be a useful tool and when it might be a distraction.

Yang worked at several privacy-focused tech companies, and spent time at BaseCamp and Deloitte in data and research roles. She worked at a few humanitarian agencies, such as the International Rescue Committee and the One Acre Fund.

Yang’s appointment is one of the first leadership hires since OIT and former Chief Information Officer David Edinger announced a restructuring back in May. In June, the state also hired Casey Cook to serve as principal director of enterprise architecture.

The restructuring, which was found to be necessary after an internal operational assessment found serious shortcomings across the department, not only saw Edinger step down from the role, but led to the elimination of 173 employees and a transition to a new operating model. Sarah Tuneberg, who’d previously served as OIT’s deputy executive director for digital and delivery, was selected to step into the top tech role.

“Used effectively, #AI can be part of the solution to make it easier and faster for Coloradans to find accurate information about services, streamline the application and verification processes for public benefits, and much more,” Yang wrote in a post on LinkedIn two weeks ago. “At the same time AI has exposed cybersecurity vulnerabilities and can cause serious harm if not appropriately deployed with proper disclosure, ongoing evaluation, and appeal pathways. It’s a huge challenge to operationalize shared governance and infrastructure that balance these realities in any setting. It’s even more so in the context of building back trust with agency partners, oversight bodies, and ultimately the people of Colorado.”