Meet Texas’s new CIO, Tony Sauerhoff

Tony Sauerhoff has been serving as Texas’s interim chief information officer since January, after Amanda Crawford, the former statewide CIO, stepped down. Last month Gov. Greg Abbott removed Sauerhoff’s interim status, leaving him to head the state’s IT policy work, from AI to cyber. “I think AI is going to play a big part of where we’re headed and what we’re focused on going forward,” he said on the latest episode of the Priorities Podcast.

This week’s top stories:

Two nonprofit civic tech outfits, the Center for Civic Futures and the Recoding America Fund, this week announced a new, $10 million round of grant funding aimed at repairing states’ benefit systems. Organizers said the goals are “reducing administrative burden, closing enrollment gaps and improving the experience of both benefit recipients and government staff.”

The Supercomputer Center at the University of California San Diego last month powered on a new data hub called the California Wildfire Commons, playing a central role in helping the state modernize how it shares and uses wildfire data.

Late last month, Oklahoma’s governor signed into law a new consumer-focused bill offering residents new data rights, though one data-privacy expert said that there are some industry trends that could supercede some of the changes.

New episodes of StateScoop’s Priorities Podcast are posted each Wednesday. For more of the latest news and trends across the state and local government technology community, subscribe to the Priorities Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,Soundcloud or Spotify.