State CIOs anticipate a more turbulent technology landscape, NASCIO’s annual survey finds

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) released the results of its 2026 State CIO Survey on Monday, highlighting the growing pressures facing state technology leaders, with 68% anticipating increased turbulence and disruption to the role over the next five years.

The 17th edition of NASCIO’s annual State CIO Survey, which was revealed at the NASCIO Annual Conference in San Diego, includes responses from 51 state and territory CIOs across eight topics. A central theme discovered in the 2026 survey is the changing nature of the CIO role, as a majority of state technology leaders said they are navigating expanding responsibilities, rapid technological change and a modernization landscape that is increasingly difficult to keep pace with.

Tony Sauerhoff, CIO of Texas and executive director of the Texas Department of Information Resources, said that the finding is not surprising. He added that the turbulence doesn’t necessarily emanate from the state environment, but the overall landscape. 

“I think it’s this environment we find ourselves — the technical environment — we find ourselves in. We’re being asked to do more, state CIOs, state CIO organizations. We’re being asked to do more outside of traditional IT, with the role expanding” Sauerhoff said Monday at the conference in San Diego. 

These changes, Sauerhoff said, are changing the way CIOs are thinking through a central charge of their office: modernization. 

“We’ve been doing modernization for years… I don’t like to use the word modernization anymore because we’ve been doing modernization in IT for a long time, and those of us that have been doing it for a long time, it means something it doesn’t really mean today,” he continued. “It no longer means upgrading technology, upgrading hardware and software. It means changing how we run our business, how we do things, and it’s more digital transformation than modernization for me.” 

However, there are challenges to tackling digital transformation, too. CIOs cited budget uncertainty, fragmented funding, one-time funding sources and demand outpacing resources among the constraints. 

Christine Sakuda, Hawaii’s CIO and administrator of the state’s Office of Enterprise Technology Services, said that the state has “a ton of funding, but I think not enough” for digital services. Part of this push for more funding includes getting the word out there about the value of digitizing resident services.

“What we try to do is we try to message that our digital services are the digital piping that delivers services to our executive branch, and so we’re constantly trying to communicate the value of our services to the departments, to the constituents,” Sakuda said, adding that solving these digital service challenges is a top priority. 

“We are really in a phase now where we’re going to be looking at how can we create a pretty comprehensive and intentional strategic plan to realign our digital services, our portal services across the executive branch to our constituents, so that they have a unified experience across all of government services,” she continued. 

The survey results show that state CIOs are also struggling to get and maintain dedicated funding for digital transformation and services. Of the respondents, 55% of state CIOs said they have dedicated funding to advance citizen digital services, while 45% do not. 

Other findings included that AI governance is becoming almost universally implemented, with 98% of state CIOs responding that they have enterprise policies and procedures for AI development and use in place. That is up from 76% last year, and the procurement terms and contract provisions for GenAI also jumped from 41% to 61%.  

AI, however, is not done moving the needle across state governments. The results show that 64% of state CIOs said agentic AI will be the most impactful emerging technology over the next two to three years, compared with just 14% for GenAI. Current agentic AI activity is concentrated largely in internal workflow and process automation, IT operations, application development and customer service.  

Another key topic is the national conversation around data centers, which NASCIO Executive Director Doug Robinson said Monday has, in some cases, generated a “ridiculous level of response” from citizens. In turn, 43% of state tech leaders said they were downsizing or “right-sizing” the state’s data center facilities this year. 

However, amid that discourse, more states are moving their infrastructure into the cloud, with 73% of CIOs saying their future data center plans included expanding the use of public cloud infrastructure over the next few years, and 55% saying they have plans to hybridize the model by combining state-owned and cloud with third-party infrastructure.  

Beyond the turbulence, the survey also highlights several areas of concern around emerging technology. Quantum computing remains largely a “watch-and-wait” technology, with 73% of CIOs saying their states are monitoring it but have taken no formal action. 

Meanwhile, state CIO organizations have yet to extend digital accessibility support broadly to local governments, with just 35% reporting that they assist local governments with accessibility efforts. Cybersecurity remains a more immediate concern, with most CIOs identifying the protection of critical infrastructure as a high priority. One CIO described the situation as: “The threat is high and the defenders are thin.”