Wyoming CIO to step down, heads to Google

Flint Waters, the chief information officer of Wyoming, will step down from state service on September 23, to join Google, StateScoop has learned.

Waters has been Wyoming’s CIO since April 2011. Among other initiatives, he executed a move to Google’s cloud services that had been negotiated by the state’s previous CIO, Bob von Wolffradt, who is now the CIO of Iowa.

At Google, Waters will join the Google for Work team and focus on government customers, primarily helping them adopt Google’s products.

Google has an ever-growing footprint in the state and local government space — Virginia and Colorado have made strides within the last year to deepen their involvement in Google products.

Under Waters’ watch, Wyoming moved away from state-owned data centers and instead into the cloud using a mixture of Google and Azure solutions, Waters told StateScoop in an April 2016 Q&A.

In that Q&A, Waters said presenting Wyoming’s IT accomplishments to the Google sales team was one of his proudest accomplishments. Google, apparently, was similarly impressed. It featured Wyoming’s use of Google Apps as a case study, including what the state found with its move to the cloud.

Waters also spearheaded efforts to create the Wyoming Unified Network — a network of fiber lines connecting core cities in the state that currently deliver peak broadband access of 200 Kbps per student to school districts across the state. That’s expected to increase to twice the national target of 1Mbps per student, under the ConnectED program, by 2018, Waters said.

Over the last year, under direction from Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, the state has moved into a centralized IT agency, as well.

In the April 2016 Q&A, Waters acknowledged Mead’s support for innovation in the state’s technology efforts, but said the biggest challenge he faced in the job was “innovation at the speed of government.”

Mead is reportedly looking at potential candidates to replace Waters but has not yet selected a replacement.