Government, Connected: A Conversation with Washington State CIO Bill Kehoe

In this episode of NASCIO Voices, hosts Amy and Alex sit down with Bill Kehoe, State CIO of Washington, for a wide-ranging conversation about his 25-year career in public sector technology leadership. Bill traces his journey from serving as the first CIO of Washington's Department of Licensing to roles at King County and Los Angeles County before returning to lead the state. He shares his passion for "connected government" — the vision of breaking down agency silos to create seamless, frictionless digital experiences for residents — and highlights Washington's new wa.gov resident portal as a concrete step toward that goal. The conversation covers how AI is accelerating modernization efforts, the cybersecurity challenges that come with it, and how Bill navigated a gubernatorial transition while keeping key initiatives on track. Bill also discusses his work on the NASCIO Executive Committee and his own "Coffee with Kehoe" podcast series, which has become an unexpected recruiting tool for his agency. The episode wraps up with a lightning round featuring Bill's pet peeves, who he would pick to play himself in a biopic and his plans for the summer both inside and outside the office.

Transcript

Amy Glasscock 0:05

Hi, and welcome to NASCIO Voices where we talk all things state IT. I'm Amy Glasscock in Lexington, KY.

Alex Whitaker 0:18

And I'm Alex Whitaker in Washington DC. Today we are talking with someone many of you know well. Washington State CIO Bill Kehoe.

Amy Glasscock 0:18

Bill has had a lot of impactful free on public sector IT, and he's been the leader on some of the most important conversations happening in state government today. From connected government to AI to cybersecurity. Bill, welcome to NASCIO Voices, and we're glad to finally have you on the podcast.

Bill Kehoe 0:33

Thank you, Amy and Alex. And you know, I was wondering if I would ever get invited actually. Did I do something wrong? You know, I listen to all of the NASCIO podcasts, and I'm a I'm a true believer in this podcast. So it's great.

Amy Glasscock 0:54

You are, yes.

Alex Whitaker 0:56

Yeah. Well, we appreciate, and just for the audience, Amy and I were sitting around being at ad mid-year and go, wait, how have we not had Bill on?

Amy Glasscock 1:03

A major oversight on our part. You have been a listener for a long time.

Alex Whitaker 1:08

All right. Well, let's get to it though, and let's start at the beginning. You have had a long career as a public sector CIO. Tell us about that journey and how it led to your current role as state CIO in Washington.

Bill Kehoe 1:20

Yes. So yeah, I was at a conference yesterday and one of the panelists said something about old guys. And I went, oh wow, that's that's probably me. Yeah, I've been a public sector CIO now for 25 consecutive years. And it's amazing how fast that's gone. But I've been the CIO for what is the equivalent of the state of Washington DMV. We call it Department of Licensing because it's business licensing and DMB. And I was their first CIO starting in 2002. Did some really cool things there. We put the first applications online. At that point, we weren't even taking credit cards in our offices. So not only do we put vehicle tabs and business licensing and driver's license renewals online, but we also, you know, gave our residents the ability to do that 24-7-365. So it was it was cool to be a part of that and the transformation of that agency. Also part of the first Enhanced Driver's License project that also served as a way to get across the border. We had a RFID and and worked with Homeland Security, put that into the driver's license. So really cool things and my first stint as a CIO. And then I applied to be a state CIO, did not get the job during my stint at DOL. And one of the panelists on the interview panel said, Hey, you know, you might want to get some more experience outside of departmental licensing. And so I I took that to heart and said, Well, uh King County in Washington had an opening and I applied there and was fortunate enough to get that position and started my journey in in county government. Went from there to Los Angeles County, which you know is larger than most states, I think 42 states. And then I was asked to apply in the opening here when Jim Weaver left the state of Washington. So I was fortunate enough to get back and actually uh have the job that I applied for way back in the early 2000s. Yeah. So come full circle.

Alex Whitaker 3:36

Awesome. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it's certainly cool to hear about the uh the evolution at the DMV there. But you know, you also talk a lot about connected government in the state of Washington. So would love to know in your current role, what does that mean in practical terms for citizens? And what progress are you most proud of as you're in your in your current capacity as CIO?

Bill Kehoe 3:55

I am very excited about connected government. It's uh it's a passion I've had for ever since I've I've been in county government and ever since I put the online we put the online transactions forward at a department of licensing because I saw the impact it had on our residents when they can come on online and transact our simple transactions instead of having to drive to an office and stand in line. That I mean, that's good government, right? So that really had an had an impact on me. So everywhere I've been, I've said, hey, how can we in in technology enable a better customer experience? Whether that's online, whether that's over the phone, whether that's in an office. And so connected government to me is let's give our our residents that seamless experience, that frictionless experience where the friction happens on the back end, but not on the front end with our uh with our residents as they come in to transact with government. So that's the mantra is we gotta connect our siloed options and agencies and data so that we can provide that experience. Because government has traditionally grown grown up in these agency or department silos, whether it's state or local government. And I think what I'm most proud of is that we've we had this uh what I call we went we've gone from PowerPoint to actually implementing a solution where we had this idea of let's let's build a resident portal, and other states have done this as well. That's not a website, but it's actually a portal that personalizes the experience for our residents and gives them a secure authorization and identity process to register as well. So we've stood up both a customer identity and access management system and what we're calling our WA.gov or resident portal. And so we already have transitioned some of our services from an outdated platform called Secure Access Washington into this platform, and we have plans to fully launch this in the next few months. So very excited about going from the vision of connected government to an actual project, getting that project funded, which is not easy, going working through a governor's transition and then actually have it come to a reality, which sometimes we don't get to do as as state CIOs.

Amy Glasscock 6:29

What do you feel like still gets in the way of delivering that kind of seamless experience for citizens? Is it is it the budget or other things?

Bill Kehoe 6:36

It's budget. It's culture. It's one of the hardest things to do in any, I think in any government is to get the entire enterprise on board to work together towards something like a resident portal. When traditionally and and we still have budgets that are focused on agencies. And so if we're putting this resident portal vision together, a big part of the project is change management and also onboarding the agencies to go from what they have today to this new modern resident portal. So that's a big part of anything we do as a as an enterprise, right? When we have these uh solutions is making sure the we have support, not on the legislature and the governor's office, but we also bring agencies on through this change management process.

Amy Glasscock 7:28

Yeah, that is a the big part of all of those big initiatives like that for sure. So I know you've been talking about connected government uh for years now. Like you said, you've been passionate about it since before you were state CIO. So how has you know this explosion of AI and generative AI just in the last couple of years changed or accelerated that conversation?

Bill Kehoe 7:53

But for I think just making government more efficient all around, all the layers of government, but specifically for connected government, I think what we're seeing is that through this modernization, which which is part of the connected government, modernization includes the customer experience, it includes the business process, it includes data, the data piece, which is a huge gap in most governments. It includes the integration and the and the legacy systems that need to be modernized. So it's it's all encompassing, which is why I love that uh NASCIO Top 10 has modernization now and not legacy modernization. And so all those components of modernization have an AI component. And the resident portal, you know, we're gonna have things that personalize the experience via chatbot and other AI-enabled functionality. We can personalize that for our residents as they come in so that, hey, last time you were interested in these types of benefits, we think you could be also eligible for these other benefits as an example. So AI is going to enhance the customer experience, but it's also gonna enhance all those components of modernization. We can use AI now to go into mainframe COBOL programs and pull out business logic, eligibility logic, and also help us with the data analysis and get the insights we need. So it's just gonna be a huge accelerator, if you will, for both modernization and for connected the connected government vision.

Amy Glasscock 9:38

Yeah, I often say that, you know, AI made it to the top of the top 10 lists, but I feel like everything else on that list AI has something to do with too.

Bill Kehoe 9:45

So well, that's the great thing about the top 10. You could you could take modernization and almost every single one of the top 10 fits within modernization.

Amy Glasscock 9:54

Yeah, yeah, they all interconnect. Yeah.

Alex Whitaker 9:57

Um, so we touched on it a little bit, but any specific AI initiatives that you're working on in the state or any other things you'd like to highlight?

Bill Kehoe 10:04

Yeah, we we've been really trying to build our foundation, I think. AI is is gonna be an accelerator, it's gonna be a difference maker, but there's workforce concerns. We want to make sure that we have the the proper training, we want to make sure we have the proper licensing tools that are standardized across the state as well, and that's a challenge. And then we want to hit make sure we have the right privacy and security guidelines in place. So we've been doing a lot around what is that foundation we need, and then we can build upon that foundation. But we do have I think a lot of use cases that are coming out from agencies, everything from fish and wildlife to ecology to also our GIS program, and we had a recent flood, and and the GIS and AI were very, very instrumental in identifying, you know, those areas where we needed to apply resources during the flood. There's a huge emergency management component to this, but there's AI is going to be an enabler and accelerator to provide efficiencies in the in our workforce and in our processes, especially with agentic AI. But we want to make sure we're building that on our on a firm foundation. So we're starting to see it more in almost everything we do. But there's a huge employee training component. It's not just IT, it's also on the business side as well.

Alex Whitaker 11:36

Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think it's really interesting, and I think similar to what a lot of states are doing. And but I think the way that you phrased it of building a foundation is so important.

Bill Kehoe 11:44

Yeah, you gotta you gotta have the governance, you gotta have the security and the privacy, or see the worst thing that we can do is launch something without going through our uh, you know, a really diligent process or not having the right guard guardrails in place. Right. Something goes very wrong and it's public, and that puts all the other really great things that we want to do at risk.

Alex Whitaker 12:09

I I wish some of our friends in the federal government uh would listen to this, and particularly what you just said, because that is the message that we are trying to convey to them. So, you know, but of course, with great AI promise comes great AI responsibility, which is what we're talking about, but also cybersecurity threats. So we'd love to know how you're working in Washington to safeguard against both the new and long-standing cyber challenges.

Bill Kehoe 12:31

I think AI has both made it more difficult on the cyber front, but also I think it's going to be something that helps us with the attacks that we're gonna see. So it's it's a double-edged sword right now. What we're seeing is very sophisticated phishing emails using AI. So one of the emails that my staff, some of my staff got last week was uh asking to purchase gift cards for. Yeah, which is you know a common text phishing method. So but it was so sophisticated because it went it went directly to someone new that was reporting to me. It didn't go to all my direct reports because they would have said, yeah, right. We're not buying you gift cards, Bill. Wow. Don't even think about it. But it went to our new report. And so that's how pointed these attacks are and how sophisticated these attacks are. So the fishing aspect is we're looking into how can we harden that, how can we get ahead of that more than we actually are. So we're looking into that aspect. But all across the board on the cyber front, we're going to have to be more diligent in not only um identifying our vulnerabilities, but closing them faster, patching faster. And that's what AI and and and some of these tools that are out there now, some of these models, they can identify a vulnerability and attack that vulnerability quickly. And so we are we're gonna have to be more diligent in identifying and closing and patching even more than we had been.

Amy Glasscock 14:04

Yeah, the joke at NASCIO is whenever we get one of those phishing emails from a pretend Doug Robinson to get gift cards, they always start with, I hope you're having a nice day. And Doug's like, I would never say that. He's like, I'm not that nice.

Bill Kehoe 14:19

Or my def just said, Bill, we're not buying you any gift cards, so don't even ask again.

Amy Glasscock 14:23

Yeah. Go get your own gift cards.

Bill Kehoe 14:25

Yeah.

Amy Glasscock 14:25

Oh, all right. So earlier in this conversation, you mentioned administration change. So you are continuing a state CIO under Governor Bob Ferguson after serving under Governor Jay Inslee. What does that continuity make possible and how do priorities shift with the new administration?

Bill Kehoe 14:43

Yeah, that was an experience, I will, I will admit. I'm very, very fortunate that Governor Ferguson has allowed me to continue as state CIO because there were so many projects and initiatives that I I wanted to see through that sometimes when there's a a shift when new leadership comes in, things can drastically change or get undone. But we had put so much effort and so many years into like the connected government vision, the y.gov vision, and some of these other really key initiatives, including things within our enterprise agency, some modernization efforts of our services, that there's some continuity there. And when Governor Ferguson came in, we immediately went into a a deep budget crisis of you know twelve to sixteen billion dollars. And so I was able to see the my agency through that and look for ways we could keep things going within some within these budget constraints. So I feel like that was very good for the agency in the state in terms of my understanding of some of these key projects, not just within my agency, but from an enterprise perspective. We have an enterprise EHR project that's critical. We have an ERP project with finance that's critical, and I was playing a role in all of those projects, ensuring that you know they had a path to success. So being able to continue that in the new administration has been very good.

Amy Glasscock 16:20

That's great.

Alex Whitaker 16:21

Yeah, absolutely. But in addition to all the work that you're doing as CIO, you're also a member of the NASCIO Executive Committee. What made you decide to get more involved with NASCIO? And especially on such a deeper level with the EC?

Bill Kehoe 16:33

Well, I think I got a uh email from Mandy Crawford that said, Hey, we'd like you to do this. Please say yeah. Uh huh. I had an opening. And you don't say no to Mandy Crawford, right? Uh so I said yes. When I was in local government, I was a uh member of this group called Mix, which is a very smaller version of NASCIO, but it's run by local government CIOs. It's a great it's a great organization. So I went from secretary to vice president to president to past president through that organization, and that was very fulfilling. A lot of work, but very fulfilling. And so when this opportunity at NASCIO, NASCIO is a great organization. Every since I come in as state CIO in August of 21, I've been very impressed with NASCIO and how it's run, very professional. It was an opportunity for me, I think, to uh just to dig deeper into NASCIO, offer my experience, especially with local government. I think that's helpful to have that experience and and to be able to bring that to the executive team, uh, make a difference in any way I can, and then uh learn about NASCIO and how it's run as an organization. And uh it's just the staff with you all and the other staff at NASCIO do a fantastic job. It's a very healthy organization. So I'm learning from all of you, bringing that back to my own organization, which is great, and it gives me a chance to develop deeper relationships with the CIOs that are on the executive team, which has happened, and I'm very thankful for that, and with Doug and the NASCIO staff. So it's great. I love it.

Amy Glasscock 18:09

Awesome. Well, we're so glad to have you, and we really appreciate your volunteering to be part of the the committee. So, and and for those listening, um, the executive committees really are bored, um, but that's what we call it. So yeah. And so um one last thing I wanted to ask you about. You are a podcaster too. You've got your own Coffee with Keho series that's on YouTube, I believe. So tell us yeah, tell us about that and what inspired you to start it.

Bill Kehoe 18:34

Well, we all have communication teams, right? And so my communications team wanted me to be more visible, and so they didn't necessarily say, hey, coffee with keyhood in a podcast, but it's evolved into that. And I'm just having a blast with it. Yeah. It's it's amazing how it's not that a lot of people view it, but I'll I'll go to conferences or I'll see people in industry and in places and they'll say, Oh, I saw your last podcast. I'm a I'm a big follower of Coffee with Kehoe and I'll go, wow, great, cool. Yeah. So it's bringing visibility not to me, but to the to our state, to our agency. It's talking about our initiatives, so industry can benefit from it. And I get to highlight the staff here, which has been fantastic. So I'll have new staff come on or staff that have been here a while and have them talk about what they do and the projects and they're we're working on. It's that's very popular because then that goes out, makes them more visible, and highlights the agency. So we've had a lot of recruits come in and in the interview they'll say, you know, we'll ask them what's interesting you about Watec. And they'll say, Oh, I I saw coffee with Kehoe, and it looks like a really cool place to work. Yeah. So that's awesome. Did we intend it to be like that? Uh, because it's kind of cheesy, you know, it's not like I'm a podcaster or anything, but the benefits have been great, and now I'm starting to have fun with it. So

Amy Glasscock 20:12

yeah, and people kind of feel like they know you a little bit better when they yeah they listen to your podcast.

Alex Whitaker 20:16

I mean, Amy, you and I get recognized all the time because I can't walk down the street in DC.

Amy Glasscock 20:23

People have said something to me twice uh in the six years that we've been doing this at a conference. Uh like, oh my gosh, it's it's Amy Glasscock from Lexington, Kentucky.

Alex Whitaker 20:34

Uh you said that and I almost automatically wanted to say it. I'm Alex Whitaker. So it's like a Pavlovian response at this point.

Bill Kehoe 20:40

Your identity now. Yeah.

Amy Glasscock 20:42

Yeah. It is.

Alex Whitaker 20:43

All right, Bill. Well, thank you so much for coming on. You have made it, though, to everyone's favorite part of the show, which is the lightning round. Three quick questions and no overthinking. Are you ready?

Bill Kehoe 20:55

Oh, it's it's it's gonna be hard, but I'm gonna try.

Amy Glasscock 20:58

All right. So uh the first question is uh about pet peeves, and this is because I noticed on your podcast that when you drink from your coffee cup, it appears that you actually have coffee in it. And I I believe that we've asked you about this, and you said, Yeah, of course I have coffee in my coffee cup because my ridiculous pet peeve is in movies or TV shows when people are drinking coffee, but it's clearly empty because it's not a natural way to hold it or drink. Uh so what is your ridiculous pet peeve?

Bill Kehoe 21:29

Oh wow. Um, I would say that uh professionally it's I have this this pet peeve that where I have to be if I don't feel prepped for a a meeting, then it really bothers me. Or if I'm not on time for a meeting, it really bothers me. Which I'm notoriously late. Oh no. So that that you know, prepping for meetings, I'm a big believer you don't have a meeting if if you don't have an agenda and you don't have an outcome and you're you're really driving, you should probably not have that meeting. So yeah, that's something that I really try to do, which is a pet peeve, which is so probably sometimes over prepare, but I feel like I have to be prepared whenever there's a meeting that I'm leaving.

Amy Glasscock 22:12

Yeah, that's a good thing.

Alex Whitaker 22:13

Yeah. I would say I don't even know if that's a pet peeve. That just sounds like good management.

Bill Kehoe 22:17

Well, others might think that it's others might think that it's, yeah.

Alex Whitaker 22:21

I gotcha. All right, so who would play you in a biopic about your life?

Bill Kehoe 22:25

You know, this this is a really uh this was a tough question. I had to ask my executive assistant, I have to admit. And she said, Well, how about Ed Harris? All right, all right. Oh, yeah. You know, he's he's on point, but he's got a little bit of uh, you know, personality and and sense of humor, but he gets things done. I said, Okay, that's awesome.

Amy Glasscock 22:46

Yeah, sure he would love to play that part. All right, and finally, uh do you have any fun summer plans?

Bill Kehoe 22:54

Well, uh yes. I I have on the professional front, I am trying to go all in on AI to see how I can be a better CIO with AI and more efficient. So I got a lot, I'm still learning a lot, but I'm ex doing a lot of exploring, and it's amazing how much time I think we can save with with AI. So that's exciting. And then on the personal front, my goal is to play more golf, spend more time in the gym, and of course, spend a lot more time with my my four grandkids.

Alex Whitaker 23:27

So that's what we're I'll I'll just quickly point out, Bill is part of the uh the the gym workout crew, which I at pretty much every NASCIO conference I always see around there. So I see you all all the time. You're already in there a lot. I will just stop for that. It's good.

Amy Glasscock 23:43

It's good to keep the routine going when you're traveling for work.

Bill Kehoe 23:45

Just pick places with good gyms, please.

Amy Glasscock 23:48

Yeah, seriously.

Alex Whitaker 23:49

Bill, well, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. We really appreciate you sharing your perspective and all the work you're doing in Washington. I'm so glad we could finally have you on.

Amy Glasscock 23:56

Me too!