With New CIO at Helm, Baltimore Crafts First Strategic IT Plan

The City of Baltimore, after selecting Frank Johnson as its new Chief Information Officer, hopes to create a new enterprise road map for information technology modernization. Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has talked about a need for “forward-thinking” people at City Hall, and Johnson will oversee the first ever inclusive IT strategic plan, or a digital transformation plan.

According to Johnson, the plan will likely be divided into multiple parts, including a focus on people and process and an emphasis on new IT priorities. These priorities include consolidating servers and networks, virtualizing and containerizing workloads, opening a path to the cloud, getting off the mainframe, and creating a new dev-ops team. This plan will also include a smart cities component, which will entail strengthening the IT infrastructure.

Johnson has acknowledged that this undertaking will not be easy and will be long, hard, and expensive. Baltimore has, however, already made progress in some areas, such as the smart water meters rolled out in 2016 and upcoming smart trash cans to keep public areas clean. The plan will likely be available for public comment later in Q1, and it will be interesting to watch moving forward as to what initiatives unfold and how the City progresses in its endeavors.

Source: GovTech