Paul Hopingardner, county executive for technology and operations of Travis County, Texas

What challenges did your team face over the last year?

Rolling out all of the laptops and devices for people for work from home, including the decision to move away from desktops and work primarily off of laptops even in the office. So far, we’ve had a really successful implementation of work from home, but what we all know is that we need that framework in place and the proper education training for everybody. Working through the different kinds of personas, there’s some people who may be in the office all the time, because of the type of job that they have and others that are in a hybrid world, where they may be back and forth, and some may be for the most part, working from home all the time.

What has the pandemic taught you about leadership?

People with the right explanation and the right understanding of what’s going on are willing to go above and beyond. The important part of leadership is making sure that you still have communications with people and regular meetings and discussions in keeping people informed.

What’s next on your team’s to-do list?

What we’re looking for is how we sustain that relationship between employees and everyone they’re working with and development as a culture. We’re also looking at what does that mean for a home office? What does that mean for facilities? How much space are we going to look at converting into collaborative space and hoteling kinds of things? What’s the technology necessary to do that? What type or do we have to have in collaboration rooms? Or what technology people have to have to be able to work from anywhere?