Chief Information and Technology Officer - 48000901

State of Florida•Tallahassee, FL

2d•Onsite

About The Position

The Chief Information and Technology Officer is a cabinet-level executive who sets the Department’s technology vision, architecture, and investment agenda; runs the Division of Technology and Innovation (DTI) (including the Education Data Center and related application, infrastructure, data, security, and service functions); and represents FDOE with the Florida Digital Service (or successor enterprise IT body), the Legislature, school districts, colleges, and vendors. While the CIO directly oversees DTI, technology leadership and modernization efforts extend across the Department. The CIO will work collaboratively with technology teams throughout the agency, including those within the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (VR), Division of Blind Services (DBS), and Division of Early Learning (DEL), to advance shared technology priorities, strengthen operational support, and ensure alignment with the Department’s broader strategic goals. These teams play a critical role in maintaining essential systems, supporting division-specific needs, and contributing to the Department’s long-term technology modernization efforts. Success in this role is defined by four outcomes: (1) a funded, governed, and executing plan to exit the mainframe and retire COBOL-dependent applications on a public timeline; (2) a production-ready AI and advanced analytics program that improves operations and decision-making under a clear risk and privacy framework; (3) measurable improvement in reliability, security, and service to program offices and local education agencies; and (4) a rebuilt technology organization that can attract and keep modern engineering, data, and product talent. The Florida Department of Education (FDOE) is seeking a transformation-minded Chief Information Officer to serve as the agency’s senior technology executive and statutory agency CIO under section 282.3055, Florida Statutes. This is not a caretaker role. The next CIO will retire a remaining mainframe and COBOL/DB2 estate that still underpins core statewide education operations, stand up a durable cloud and data platform, and scale artificial intelligence in a way that is useful to districts, colleges, and the Department—without compromising student privacy, cybersecurity, or public trust. A completed feasibility study frames enterprise mainframe modernization as a multi-year program—three phases over six years, with an estimated total cost of approximately $151 million—covering student data collection, education finance calculations, financial reporting, transcript exchange, assessment reporting, school identification, and capital outlay. Year-one work includes a program management office, COBOL and DB2 inventory and business-rule extraction, knowledge transfer from a shrinking specialist workforce, and cloud foundation work consistent with Florida’s cloud-first policy and Chapter 60GG cybersecurity rules. The CIO will own that program end to end and will be judged on whether the mainframe actually goes away.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution in information systems, computer science, engineering, business, public administration, or a closely related field.
Ten or more years of progressive executive or senior IT leadership may substitute on a year-for-year basis for the degree.
Ten or more years of progressive information technology leadership, including at least five years leading a multi-function IT organization (applications, infrastructure or cloud, security, and data) in government, education, or a comparably regulated enterprise.
Demonstrated record of delivering at least one large-scale modernization: mainframe or COBOL exit, core system replacement, cloud migration of mission systems, or equivalent transformation with published outcomes.
Experience owning an IT budget, vendor portfolio, and legislative or board-level investment case.
Working knowledge of cybersecurity and privacy obligations in a public or education setting.
Ability to obtain and maintain any access required for State of Florida systems and to work in Tallahassee on a regular cadence.
Strategic clarity. Can reduce a six-year, nine-figure program to a sequence a cabinet can fund and a delivery team can execute.
Technical judgment. Enough depth in mainframe, cloud, data, identity, and AI to call vendor bluffs and protect the Department from fashionable but unfit architecture.
Political and legislative fluency. Comfortable in Sunshine, appropriations, and public scrutiny.
Operator’s discipline. Transformation work does not excuse missed survey windows or funding-calculation failures.
Talent magnet. Can hire in a market that pays private-sector CIOs far more than state SMS rates by offering mission, authority, and a real modernization mandate.
Integrity and candor. Reports risk early. Does not confuse activity with progress.
Male applicants born on or after October 1, 1962, will not be eligible for hire or promotion in the Other Personal Services (OPS) or Career Service (CS), or appointment in the Selected Exempt Service (SES) or Senior Management Service (SMS) unless they are registered with the Selective Service System (SSS) before their 26th birthday, or have a Letter of Registration Exemption from the SSS.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree (MBA, MPA, MS in a technical field) or an executive credential such as CGCIO.
Direct experience modernizing IBM mainframe / COBOL / CICS / DB2 estates, including business-rule extraction and coexistence architectures.
Experience standing up or scaling an enterprise AI, machine learning, or intelligent-automation program with governance—not a pilot that never left the lab.
K-12, higher education, or state education agency experience, including student information, education finance, assessment, or longitudinal data systems.
Florida state government experience, including Chapter 282 / 60GG, Florida Digital Service engagement, legislative budget requests, and SMS/SES organizations.
CISSP, CISM, PMP, cloud architect, or equivalent professional certification.
Record of rebuilding an IT workforce—succession for legacy skills and hiring for cloud, data, and product roles.

Responsibilities

Own the enterprise mainframe modernization program as a single accountable executive—scope, sequence, budget, vendors, risk, and legislative reporting.
Complete and maintain a full inventory of COBOL, CICS, DB2, batch, and interface assets; extract business rules; map data and process dependencies; and publish a system-by-system retire, rewrite, replace, or encapsulate decision.
Stand up a Program Management Office with independent verification and validation, stage-gate funding, and monthly executive dashboards that a non-technical cabinet and legislative staff can read.
Move remaining workloads off the mainframe to cloud-native or commercially supported platforms consistent with s. 282.205, F.S. (cloud-first), Northwest Regional Data Center and enterprise hosting policy, and Chapter 60GG-2, F.A.C.
Protect continuity of FEFP funding calculations, survey/data collections, transcripts, assessments, MSID, PECO, and related mission systems during cutover. No “big bang” that puts a school year at risk.
Capture institutional knowledge from retiring mainframe specialists before it walks out the door; convert it into documented product and data contracts.
Publish and execute an agency AI strategy covering use-case intake, model risk, human-in-the-loop rules, procurement, evaluation, and retirement of tools that do not perform.
Prioritize high-value, low-regret uses first: document intelligence, code and test generation for modernization, service-desk deflection, data-quality assistance, legislative and policy research support, and internal knowledge retrieval.
Expand to instructional and district-facing tools only after governance, FERPA, and security controls are proven.
Establish an AI review board (legal, privacy, program, security, and data) with authority to pause or kill deployments.
Require vendors to meet data-residency, training-data, audit, and no-retention terms appropriate for student and staff records.
Prefer architectures that keep sensitive data inside the State’s control plane.
Build internal capability so the Department is not permanently dependent on a single AI vendor or on shadow tools.
Measure adoption and outcomes. AI that is not used, not evaluated, or not secure does not count as scaled.
Treat education data as a product: owned, documented, quality-measured, and reusable across program offices and authorized partners.
Strengthen the K-20 Education Data Warehouse, survey collections, and longitudinal reporting so the Commissioner, State Board, districts, and Legislature can act on timely, trusted numbers.
Reduce duplicative collections from districts and colleges; publish APIs and data contracts instead of one-off file drops wherever feasible.
Align with statewide data and identity standards from the Florida Digital Service and the agency CIO workgroup.
Partner with Accountability, Research and Measurement; Finance and Operations; Public Schools; Florida Colleges; Career and Adult Education; and Vocational Rehabilitation so technology follows the business, not the other way around.
Serve as the Department’s senior executive for information security posture, working with the designated Information Security Manager / agency CISO and the State CISO / Cybersecurity Operations Center under s. 282.318, F.S.
Drive identity, least privilege, logging, vulnerability management, incident response, and tabletop exercises that include mainframe-to-cloud transition risk.
Protect student education records and other regulated data under FERPA, related federal grant conditions, and Florida public-records and cybersecurity law.
Maintain tested disaster recovery and continuity of operations for funding, collections, and other time-critical cycles.
Set a target enterprise architecture: cloud landing zones, integration layer, identity, data platform, observability, and DevSecOps.
Stop net-new development on dead platforms.
Run reliable day-to-day operations—networks, endpoints, collaboration, service desk, application support—while the transformation work proceeds.
Modernization cannot excuse outages.
Rationalize the application portfolio. Every system has an owner, a cost, a risk rating, and a sunset or invest decision.
Improve service levels to Department staff and to districts and colleges that depend on FDOE systems.
Build and defend the IT legislative budget request, including multi-year mainframe-exit and AI platform funding, with clear milestones the Legislature can hold the agency to.
Advise the Commissioner and cabinet on technology risk, technical debt, and the true cost of delay.
Run competitive, well-scoped procurements. Prefer outcomes and interoperability over lock-in.
Hold integrators to acceptance criteria tied to retired mainframe MIPS, migrated workloads, and working products—not slide decks.
Coordinate with Florida Digital Service project oversight where required and with NWRDC and other enterprise providers.
Lead the Division of Technology and Innovation.
Hire, develop, and, where needed, restructure so the shop can do product, data, cloud, security, and AI work—not only keep a mainframe alive.
Create career paths that retain remaining COBOL/DB2 expertise long enough to finish the exit, while recruiting engineers, architects, product managers, and data scientists who will run the next platform.
Replace heroics and tribal knowledge with written standards, agile delivery where it fits public-sector constraints, and honest status reporting.
Model a service culture: technology exists to make teachers, students, program staff, and district partners more effective.
Perform the duties of the agency chief information officer under s. 282.3055, F.S.: plan and manage agency IT services; implement procedures and standards consistent with enterprise policy; advise senior management; and help prioritize IT needs in the legislative budget request.
Represent FDOE on the agency CIO workgroup and in enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, and cloud-first forums.
Ensure accessibility of public-facing systems (s. 282.601 et seq., F.S.) and compliance with applicable records, procurement, and technology rules.
Establish and keep current strategic guidelines which promote the vision of technologies to be used in education throughout the State
Reduce the total cost of ownership of technologies used to accomplish the educational goals as established by the Commissioner of Education
Propose at least 1 bold idea per month
Establish quarterly communications with district superintendents and IT leaders
Establish internal and external business relationships, partnerships and personal networks to drive the use of technology in the classrooms
Achieve departmental technology savings in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and cost
Technology strategy is explicitly aligned with business goals
Proactively identify and pursue opportunities to leverage technology to accomplish the goals of the agency
Propose at least 1 bold idea per month
Participating in Conference’s
Conducting Surveys and soliciting feedback from school districts
Provide general guidance and technical support to school district personnel involved in educational technology initiatives
IT leaders are fully vested business leaders
Establish industry leading Governance, Portfolio Management, Project Management and ITIL practices
IT teams maintain appropriate short-, mid- and long term human capitol
Current and future managers are coached and mentored
Work with vendors to leverage school districts’ bulk purchasing of devices, network infrastructure and technology services to reduce total cost of ownership
Submission of LBR’s to assist school districts in implementing digital learning and Common Core State Standards