State

New York State names new deputy CIO

New York State has named Jenson Jacob, a longtime state employee, to become its new deputy chief information officer.

By Keely Quinlan

September 23, 2025

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Following the departure of Jennifer Lorenz this summer, New York State has tapped Jenson Jacob, a longtime state government employee, to fill her role as the new deputy chief information officer.

As deputy CIO, he’ll help lead the New York Office of Information Technology Services under CIO Dru Rai. Jacob’s first day on the job was last week after filling in as acting deputy CIO for the last couple of weeks. He has nearly 14 years of experience in New York’s state government.

He started as a lead enterprise architect for New York in 2011, and has served in various other roles. Most recently, he was the state’s chief digital transformation officer. Before that, he was the tech agency’s deputy chief technology officer, overseeing business application development for a state government with more than 50 executive agencies.

Jacob started his career in the private sector, spending five years at Gulf Computers as a system analyst before moving to HCL Technologies as a systems architect. In 2006, he joined Unisys as a senior solutions architect.

Scott Reif, the chief communications officer of ITS, told StateScoop that Jacob was a “natural choice” to serve as the permanent deputy CIO under Rai. Reif said Rai and Jacob have a great working relationship and that Jacob’s strong technology background in both state government and the private sector during his early career were considerations.

Reif said Jacob’s role will include assisting the state’s transition to a new IT model, in which every agency will receive a dedicated technology team, with support from ITS, as opposed to having to share resources with other departments.

Reif added that Jacob’s prior experience will be an asset to the state throughout the transition. In both his private- and public-sector positions, Jacob led initiatives that included building digital strategies using “disruptive and enterprise technologies” and overseeing an “innovation journey” across applications and services, according to a biography published on the state’s website.