Massachusetts CIO highlights the ‘real mission in government’

With pandemic restrictions eased and more people getting back to their normal lives, Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Curtis Wood told StateScoop that his agency is taking a comprehensive look at how the last two years have transformed government operations and service delivery.

“We’ve kind of done an autopsy on over the past several months,” Wood said in an interview at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers midyear conference. “We’ve gone back to some very basics about what is our real mission in government.”

The citizen services function of Wood’s Executive Office of Technology Services and Security “was called to do many things” during the pandemic, Wood said. The results, he said, are that his agency and its partners are now working more collaboratively and that the entire state workforce, from Wood and his fellow Cabinet members on down, appreciate that mission.

“It’s really about making sure our citizens our residents have access to services of our state,” he said. “I think we take things for granted sometimes.”

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