Gretchen Peri has been concerned in serving to governments all over the world discover higher methods to make use of expertise for greater than twenty years. For the final 14 years, she led the International Public & Social Influence follow at Slalom Consulting.
She is now bringing her worldwide expertise dwelling to Washington state as the new CTO of Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech).
WaTech was established in 2011 as Washington state’s consolidated expertise companies company. Just about wherever the state is utilizing expertise to ship companies, this company is concerned.
Peri is now working to implement an ambitious new strategic plan that she says is aimed toward enhancing how Washington makes use of expertise to serve residents. Peri can also be the opening keynote speaker at the Bellevue Innovation Exchange Oct. 16 at Bellevue Metropolis Corridor.
GeekWire caught up with Peri to speak about how WaTech plans to make use of AI, cloud platforms, upgraded on-line companies, and a cultural shift in focus to enhance what it presents to state residents — and to take action at a time when state budgets are tight, and federal steerage and regulation round AI and tech remains to be evolving. The interview was edited for brevity and readability.
GeekWire: What attracted you to this function?
Peri: “I’ve spent the final 20 years of my profession in administration consulting, serving to state and native governments leverage expertise to raised ship on their enterprise outcomes. At my earlier agency, I led our international authorities schooling and nonprofit enterprise. And as thrilling as that was, I additionally discovered that I used to be making a small impression in a number of completely different locations. At this level in my profession, I wish to have a big impression in a single place. That’s what drew me to the state. And I’m so glad I’m right here.”
GeekWire: What are your high three priorities as CTO?
Peri: “I’d say my three areas of focus are:
- Placing residents first and on the coronary heart of all the pieces we design and deploy.
- Delivering accountable expertise — particularly with a few of the new and rising applied sciences we’re seeing, with guardrails that assist our workers make the very best choices doable about how and when to leverage expertise of their work.
- Utilizing expertise to enhance our general companies.
From in line to on-line, we wish to have the ability to ship our companies the place individuals are, once they want it, and in no matter language they should obtain it in.”
GeekWire: The brand new 2025 IT strategic plan requires the event of enterprise requirements for rising applied sciences, together with AI, automation, and cloud platforms, to make sure safety, fairness, and acceptable use. How massive a raise do you assume that will probably be?
Peri: “One of many largest lifts, I believe, is definitely cultural. Governments at all times design their companies from how we function, moderately than fascinated about how residents and clients truly have to obtain our companies. So it’s that cultural shift that I believe goes to be probably the most thrilling transformation and possibly probably the most work for us as we glance to leverage rising applied sciences, together with AI, in the correct approach.
One other space the place companies are very keen on utilizing new and rising applied sciences is how we expose our enterprise data base — with chatbots and different issues that many jurisdictions are deploying proper now. We’ve received very wealthy data however discovering that data generally is a problem for our residents. So utilizing our enterprise data base to ship the data to our residents is one other space.
Pc imaginative and prescient is definitely one of many actually thrilling areas, and we’re seeing this as we glance to do automated inspections to assist preserve our workers secure, or monitor the well being of our pure setting. There are some actually fascinating AI use instances round figuring out and monitoring the well being of fish or several types of eelgrass within the Puget Sound and in our oceans.
There’s additionally conversational and translational AI. The expertise has come to some extent now the place we’re in a position to present our content material in tons of of languages. And even on this space, we now have teams, we now have communities that talk distinctive languages. And so the advances in expertise enable us to succeed in them and talk with them a lot simpler than it was.
Lastly, (there may be) agentic workflow. That’s round automating our enterprise operations at scale, beginning with issues which are simple and easy, like bill matching or different varieties of issues the place we will ensure that we’re validating the data, after which we will transfer on to the duty at hand.”
GeekWire: It feels like one in every of your largest challenges could be round siloed data.
Peri: “Our drawback is precisely such as you mentioned, we now have silos inside these departments which are managing their information. We even have silos inside regulation enforcement companies, the place they’ve their data administration system and their dispatch system and their proof administration system. So bringing information collectively inside companies is our first problem after which bringing information collectively from a number of companies goes to be our second problem.”
GeekWire: As you’re making an attempt to convey AI to all of this, it’s more difficult if it’s important to ship AI off to a complete bunch of various locations.
Peri: “Precisely, and till we convey that information collectively, can we actually determine and monitor the outcomes we’re trying to generate? We are able to monitor outputs, how many individuals we’re serving with this kind of services or products, however we will’t essentially say that we’re delivering a more healthy inhabitants or a extra resilient inhabitants. In order that’s the primary focus of why we have to convey that information collectively to create a basis upon which we will actually begin to measure these outcomes and transfer these levers.”
GeekWire: Federal steerage and laws on AI and tech are nonetheless evolving. How do you propose to navigate uncertainty and evolution on the nationwide degree?
Peri: “I’m nonetheless just one month in. (But it surely’s about) leveraging the federal requirements which have been in place for fairly a while and ensuring that we’re offering our pointers and laws that match the tradition of Washington and (how) we wish to create a welcoming setting for everybody on this state. And that’s about all I can say on the federal state dialogue.”
GeekWire: Do the state’s present finances challenges change what you have to do within the IT strategic plan?
Peri: “I believe that on this finances constrained setting, it’s much more vital that we depend on our expertise to have the ability to attain individuals who actually need it proper now and ship companies extra digitally in order that they will entry them simpler.”
GeekWire: If there’s one factor you’d like Washington residents to have the ability to say a 12 months from now concerning the companies provided by WaTech, what would it not be?
Peri: “I consider the quote: ‘I count on distinctive, however I’ll accept superior’. After I look again, I would like to have the ability to say that throughout the board after we get to work together with individuals at pivotal factors of their lives, which we do as authorities, that we now have offered distinctive customer support to them.”
