‘Data enablement’ helps Oklahoma take care of its citizens

Since he was named Oklahoma’s chief information officer at the beginning of the year, Dan Cronin said, he’s been evaluating how the state’s government can use its data to better take care of its citizens.

Cronin, whose background is in leading digital transformation and process improvement efforts across large companies, told StateScoop that one of the challenges he faced coming into the CIO role was how to pick up where other CIOs for Oklahoma have left off.

He said this process has included evaluating the state’s digital government offerings, but also taking stock of state data and how it can maximize its usefulness for residents. This process, which Cronin calls “data enablement,” involves determining how to make data more accessible and usable for making decisions and setting policy. 

“We’ve got a large amount of data in the state of Oklahoma, and so we’re looking at data enablement,” Cronin said. “As we think about digital government, we understand what our citizens’ needs are, how do we couple those pieces together to provide a service to them that’s fast and effective and efficient, that meets their needs 24/7, and so we’re trying to get that in place.”

Cronin said Oklahoma is also migrating some of its old systems to the cloud. All of this work, he said, is helping Oklahoma turn its eye to the future.

“Most governments have a lot of legacy applications, and so we’re evaluating that,” Cronin said. “We’re doing a rationalization effort to understand what’s required and what’s needed going forward, and really it’s about the future strategy. Where do we want to be in the next couple of years?”