Nikhil Deshpande

State Leadership of the Year

Georgia’s longtime chief digital officer, Nikhil Deshpande has played key roles in establishing the state’s social media presence and leading the move to an enterprisewide open-source publishing system. Recently, Deshpande’s team has been working with agencies to improve their digital services, setting up measures to measure the success of various services. “We cannot just be offering online services with technology in mind, we have to cater the services with users at the center and then build the services around user needs,” he says. A key component of improving services: Google rankings. Deshpande said that part of ensuring citizens can use state services is being able to search and find them.