Illinois CIO Sanjay Gupta to step down

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday announced that state Chief Information Officer Sanjay Gupta, who’s spent the past nearly two years as the state’s top technology official, will step down at the end of the month.

Gupta, who joined the state government after five years as the Small Business Administration’s chief technology officer and a year as CIO of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, is credited in Illinois with advancing several IT initiatives. According to a governor’s office press release, Gupta improved the state’s fiscal accountability, developed relationships with other agencies, improved procurement capabilities and built up the state workforce.

​“I want to personally thank Secretary Gupta for his commitment to serving the State of Illinois,” Pritzker said in the release. “His expertise expanded DoIT’s impact across technology and innovation sectors and improved our collaboration with Illinois client agencies. I’m grateful for his work and wish him all the best in his next endeavors.”

In Illinois, Gupta also helped the state for the first time move away from a “chargeback” funding model to a direct funding model. He told StateScoop that by working with the legislature, he was able to explain how the change would improve how the state delivers services.

Gupta also said he was working to mitigate the effects of outages caused by disruptions in service from IT providers.

“I think we’re seeing a little bit more of the larger service providers having unplanned outages — and it’s not just cybersecurity, it’s across the board — and then tend to cause quite a disruption,” he told StateScoop last year. “The idea was to rely on the service providers and they have reliable and robust services, and resilient services, but it turns out that’s not necessarily the case.”

Before joining the state government, Gupta held several IT leadership positions in the private sector, including a consulting role at Gartner, a CIO role at the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles and a CIO role at the standards nonprofit International Code Council. Gupta was not immediately available to provide more information on his next job.

​Brandon Ragle, the Illinois Department of Innovation & Technology’s deputy secretary, will serve as Gupta’s interim replacement starting March 21, according to the governor’s office.