CIOs on the front lines of public safety innovation
Author
Staff
Peregrine
Published
June 5, 2024
Author
Staff
Peregrine
Published
June 5, 2024
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KEY IDEAS:
- Government IT has traditionally been viewed as a support function rather than a driver of public innovation.
- Without a secure, agile technology foundation, agencies struggle to coordinate across departments and jurisdictions.
- Modern CIOs need user-centered strategies that prioritize integration, secure data access, governance, and flexibility.
- With connected systems and shared information, CIOs can improve daily workflows, strengthen collaboration, and support safer and more prosperous communities.
Information technology (IT) in state and local government has often been seen as merely a support role in the mission — answering tickets, resetting passwords, and fixing or replacing broken hardware. In today’s high-tech, data-rich, fast-moving environment, that model no longer suffices for government agencies to keep pace with changing citizen demands. The challenge and the opportunity to build a mission-oriented data and technology strategy are too great for IT leaders to be passive.
Chief information officers (CIOs) and their teams must be strategic leaders and contributors within agencies and across municipal governments. They develop the critical technical foundation and serve as the connective tissue between government agencies managing complex technology systems and infrastructure, as well as massive amounts of data.
Ensuring the safety and success of the community is no longer the sole responsibility of law enforcement, fire, and offices of emergency management (OEMs). The challenges communities face, from homelessness to violent crime, can only be tackled by leaders strategizing and collaborating across agencies, meaningfully combining information and expertise. Information technology leaders make that possible.
🤝 MEET THE EXPERTS: To explore what this shift looks like in practice, we spoke with three CIOs leading public safety innovation at the state, county, and city levels.
- Kent Augustine, CIO for the New Mexico Department of Public Safety
- Dave Fontneau, CIO for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD)
- Vanetta Pledger, CIO for the City of Alexandria, Virginia
With a mission-focused and public-centric approach, CIOs have the ability to execute a long-term and visionary data strategy. Read on for their insights on aligning technology with frontline needs, enabling secure data sharing, and modernizing government IT operations.
To support the public safety mission, CIOs and IT teams must understand how personnel use technology in their daily work.
“We remind ourselves why we're here. We're not here for IT, we're here for public safety. My job is to ensure that the people that work for Department of Public Safety have the information they need to do their jobs and to stay safe,” said Augustine.
Fontneau agreed: “Behind the scenes, we are a support operation. Officers push the mic and the radio works, or they log into the mobile data terminal, and it works — that matters. The men and women that are on the front lines could not do their job without everybody behind the scenes.”
🔑 KEY TAKEAWAY: A user-centered technology strategy begins with understanding how personnel work, what information they need, and where technology creates friction.
Supporting the mission requires CIOs to understand how frontline personnel use technology in practice. After more than 30 years as a sworn law enforcement officer, Fontneau brought that perspective directly to OCSD’s technology strategy.
That experience taught Fontneau that it wasn’t enough to simply make sure a radio or mobile data terminal (MDT) works.
“We were living in the ’80s,” Fontneau said. He knew the OCSD needed to modernize its technology stack, and he developed a strategy to instill a culture of innovation: “Each team has their own tech lab in our innovation center, where we can meet with our customers and see what they need.”
With Fontneau’s law enforcement background and daily engagement with public safety personnel in the field, he can craft a technology strategy that supports public safety.
“I need to be out in the field as much as I possibly can,” Augustine said, because “if we're talking about implementing something, I need to go out in the field and understand the challenges that our officers are having.”
🔎 HOW CAN CIOS BUILD A USER-CENTERED TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY?
- Observing frontline workflows
- Meeting regularly with personnel
- Using agency feedback to inform technology priorities
Pledger supports technology across Alexandria’s city government, including, fire-rescue, schools, libraries, law enforcement, parks and recreation, and health and human services. Her approach is similarly proactive and user-centered.
“I focus on ease of use and ease of access,” she said. She explained how to get there: “I partner with all of them. I think about, what information do they need access to? How am I focusing on what technology we are delivering to make sure they can successfully use it to best do their job? I have in-depth conversations with law enforcement agencies and others to understand their problems and learn how they can best leverage technology to improve process and outcomes.”
That cross-department understanding helps CIOs identify shared needs and create the foundation for collaborating across agencies with a common operational picture.
READ MORE → How the City of Alexandria Unified Legacy and Modern Systems to Improve Justice Outcomes
Government agencies need to share information to work together effectively. Crime and emergencies do not stop at jurisdictional boundaries, meaning mission-critical data may sit outside an agency’s own systems. Across the broader public safety and welfare landscape, coordinated response depends on bringing together information and expertise from multiple departments.
When asked about what is causing the culture to shift, Fontneau replied, “the technology has evolved so quickly … now with a modern stack, cloud-native technology, we can spin up solutions in a very short period of time … and that allows for data sharing. … Technology is driving that culture along with thought leaders in this room and beyond.”
Sharing data across government departments — from fire-rescue and EMS to social services and law enforcement — can reveal shared priorities and support more coordinated community strategies.
“I think about after-school programs. What neighborhoods are having challenges with youth crime? Where do those people live, and what is their proximity to after school activities? If agencies can share data and partner, we can paint a better picture of our neighborhoods and solve complex problems,” Pledger said. “What if we could open the recreation center later, which curtails crime, and actually have a safer community? You can’t come to that answer without sharing data.”
🔑 KEY TAKEAWAY: Interagency data access can help government leaders identify connections between public safety conditions, community services, and prevention strategies that may not be visible within a single department.
But interagency data flows can’t happen without strong security and privacy protections. “You have to pay attention to the security controls that are in place, along with your own pen testing and vulnerability scanning and the like,” Pledger said. “Security by design and defense in depth are the two principles I think about.”
Augustine agreed, “You have to think of data governance from the very beginning of a project.”
And what he’s doing in New Mexico pursues a bold vision: secure, statewide information sharing between law enforcement agencies. “We have a lot of very, very small police departments with limited resources and siloed data. We want to enable these agencies to share data along with the larger departments across the state."
“It’s a significant culture shift within New Mexico,” Augustine concluded.
🔎 HOW CAN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ACCESS DATA SECURELY?
- Agencies should build security, privacy, governance, and access controls into data sharing initiatives from the beginning.
- Sensitive information should only be available to authorized users for approved purposes.
- Fully auditable and traceable data platforms can help agencies share information securely while maintaining oversight of access and use.
Public sector CIOs do more than maintain technology systems. By understanding frontline needs, building long-term data strategies, and enabling the common operational picture, they can help government personnel respond more effectively to complex community challenges.
That shift requires technology capable of connecting information across systems without compromising security, privacy, or agency control. Peregrine helps government and public safety agencies integrate and securely share their data, giving authorized personnel access to the information they need to make informed decisions.
💡 WHAT STRATEGIC CIOS PRIORITIZE:
- Frontline user needs
- Secure, governed data access
- Cross-agency collaboration
- Technology investments tied to public safety outcomes
GET OUR GUIDE FOR THE MODERN CIO → Evolving From ‘Order-Taker’ to Change-Maker in the Digital Age
Peregrine’s end-to-end security controls help protect sensitive information from external threats while ensuring it is accessed only by agency-authorized personnel. Built on AWS GovCloud (US), Peregrine supports secure collaboration across law enforcement agencies and other government partners.
Ready to make technology and data a more strategic part of your mission? Connect with our team to learn how Peregrine can support your city, county, or state.
Peregrine is built on AWS GovCloud (US) and is SOC II Compliant and FedRAMP High Authorized.
Government CIOs help connect technology strategy to public safety operations. Their role includes understanding user needs, modernizing infrastructure, enabling secure information sharing, and helping agencies coordinate across departments and jurisdictions.
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