New Indiana CIO lays out his short-term goals, long-term vision

New Indiana Chief Information Officer Dewand Neely isnt looking to change much as he takes the reins of the Office of Technology.

Rather, he hopes to build on the efforts of his predecessor Paul Baltzell , who left the post to join Carmel, Indiana’s Mainstreet Investments as the vice president of information technology solutions.

Paul Baltzell did a great job of getting us the attention and resources we needed to do some things we wanted to do and now we want to make sure we properly leverage that, Neely told StateScoop at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers annual conference earlier this month.

Neely noted that process will start with some pretty strict project management as he works to get a grasp on the IT projects we have going on internally over the course of the next six months.

Looking further down the road, Neely said he has his own vision for where hed like to see the office go.

[My] vision long term would be maybe venturing towards some smart cloud solutions around our data center and hosting and mobile empowerment for the users, Neely said. Were starting to see a trend toward a younger workforce thats coming in and we want to tailor that and make it a more interesting and exciting place for state government. And more visibility and efficiency for IT projects, those are sort of the three main ones.