Responsible AI Scaling With Illinois State CIO and Secretary of the Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology

Khullani Abdullahi (00:05.57) Welcome to the AI in Chicago podcast. I'm your host, Kalani Abdullahi, the founder of TechniAI, an AI governance advisory firm based in Chicago. AI in Chicago spotlights the operators, builders, and thinkers scaling applied AI part of the Midwest. Each episode delivers practical stories and playbooks leaders can use to win with AI minus the height. I'm pleased to share today that I will be speaking with Secretary and State CIO, Brandon Ragle. Before we get to his bio, what does it actually take to operate AI responsibly at the scale and entire state? As Illinois Secretary of State Chief Information Officer, Brandon Ragle leads more than 1,800 technologists delivering cloud cybersecurity and digital services. In this episode, he breaks down what most AI conversations miss, the infrastructure governance and leadership disciplines. required to turn AI ambition into durable public value without breaking trust. Brandon is responsible for a technology portfolio that exceeds a billion dollars and for aligning modernization investments with statewide priorities in reliability, security, and efficiency. He brings more than two decades of public sector technology leadership with deep experience in enterprise and non-enterprise modernization. cybersecurity strategy, cloud adoption, identity systems, and large scale service delivery. Before becoming secretary, he served as deputy secretary and deputy state CIO, as well as chief of enterprise and non-enterprise applications. He's led major platform transformations, putting tens of thousands of public servants and millions of Illinois residents. What distinguishes Brandon's work is a practical operator-driven approach to innovation, focused not on experimentation for its own sake, but on building durable infrastructure, strong governance, and high performing teams that can adapt and adopt emerging technologies like AI at scale. Today's conversation explores what it truly means to operate AI in the public sector, from infrastructure and cybersecurity to governance, talent, and trust, and what Illinois's approach can teach leaders across government, business, and civic institutions. Brandon, welcome. Brandon Ragle (02:25.016) Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me. To kick things off, I like to ask about the origin story. So you've spent more than two decades inside Illinois state government. And I'd love for you to just kind of tell us how you got to this point and reflect on the arc of your career and different moments in your career that have shaped how you think about technology. Absolutely. Well, again, first of all, thanks for for having me on here. And it's it's always a great question that I feel like people will be bored to hear, but I'm going to throw it at you anyway on that. So I actually started my career over 30 years in our state government, believe it or not. Well, people don't realize because I don't really have an author probably too much is I started in a non I.T. I actually started in a I was a correctional officer. I went on with you in the early 90s. OK, then I quickly decided, you know, if if you're around in the early 90s era, You start hearing about this thing called the Internet, right? That's really cool. That's coming out and it's going to change the world. And, of course, it piqued my interest quite a bit. And so I, ended up going back to school while I was working just to change, to get into the technology world. And so I did that. I went back and changed things around and then landed my first gig in early 2000s, 2002, actually, as a entry level. Developer for one of the departments at state of Illinois. So, so I, so I feel like it's a pretty old shows my age probably. don't know. Tell it to me that I guess, but it was pretty interesting journey because I learned a lot. I being growing up in that area era and the different style of work I was doing and I feel like there's so much from that actually taken to even today's today's world to be honest with you. So. Brandon Ragle (04:18.541) That led me in as the entry level application developer and then really just worked kind of bounced around mostly in the development side of the house, but a little bit, a little bit everything. So it was small shop stuff. So, you know, that's when you do everything. happens right. And then, like I said, fast forward, like you mentioned to where I became part of the enterprise team when duals were formed. I'll tell you about do it in a second here because it's. It's not been around forever. Actually, it's been around longer than agencies have been around. I guess I'll say so. When end when do was first talked about, I, took my name and a half for the enterprise level, which is where really. We'll talk about in a minute. I think about some things that really change when you go from from serving 1 or 2 customers to serving 13M residents. It's a total game changer on on how you think of things, but from there, but do it itself. As a, as a state agency, so we were formed officially in July 20th of 2018 actually. Okay. That's when we were codified as state agency. Part of that is we provide what we do as a mission. We provide 100 % IT and telecom support for 36 executive branch agencies. On top of that, we provide technology support for many other government entities. We have 90 total customers. I think you mentioned earlier. Uh, that really are more a la carte, but those 36 are our core mission. We provide everything from application development, support, maintenance, infrastructure, cybersecurity, telecommunications, networking, you name it. Uh, that's what we do as a centralized space for those 36 agencies. Um, they say this is kind of the early started that that journey is is. You know, was, you know, coming in as that developer was pretty cool to be able to just kind of bounce around the different roles I've had throughout my journey and. From there, like a little. Little side note too is I went back to school, I didn't get my degree in technology either. I actually got my degree in organizational leadership. then when I got to the enterprise, I realized probably more of like an MBA mentality would be more for so I didn't have to go and get my MBA after that fact. So just because my thoughts of how things changed a little bit from day one till. Yeah. Khullani Abdullahi (06:39.278) I have a question. When did you make the shift from getting your, and maybe you didn't complete the shift, when do you, do you remember when you stopped being in the terminal? When you stopped using the development environment, when did you find yourself moving more into management and overseeing strategy and you were no longer building application? Yeah, it's funny because I thought I did at one time then later in life. I realized I wasn't doing it back when I thought it was. Right? So, yeah, you know, I worked for that smaller agency before Illinois centralized. You become the developer and then you become the project manager and the developer and the tester and then you become the manager. Right? Of a very small team. And, you know, that mentality is I have 3 business owners I work with and they have very unique silo needs and I just make that they get their needs and. not worry about lot of everything else. That shift changed when I came over to do it, be honest with you, I started getting involved in the enterprise level. We're getting the enterprise level, the whole mindset changes. And what I thought I was doing right, and I probably was at the time, time, it completely changed at that point in my career. When you started seeing that now there are multiple, you could have hundreds, thousands, if not 10,000s of users use a system, you know, supporting, you know, 13 million residents, state of Illinois. You know, not everyone gets what they want. Not everyone, you know, there isn't one thing that does everything because you have to, you have to think about different things. It's not about the technology anymore. It's about, it's about how do you put the, how do you, how do you plan? You put more focus on that front end side of the house and how do you have, make sure you have change management in place and How do you for adoption and even for technical change managements? Right? What kind of processing architecture and governance do you have in place? It comes to complete shift of understanding. Okay, this is what I'm trying to do as an outcome. Right? This is how I have my foundation. How do we walk that journey together? Right? And then the steps in between is just a completely different shift of how you think about delivering IT services. Khullani Abdullahi (08:58.446) Right. I'm really glad that you shared that because I think something I want to drill down on that you said was it's not just about the technology, right? And so I think something that a lot of companies who sell technology miss is that the people who are using the technology and how they use that technology and what problems it solves are just as important. So when you have tens of thousands of employees of the state that you're serving and 13 million residents, how do you go about prioritizing? So like that mind shift change that happens when you're rolling out these enterprise, are you doing a lot of like stakeholder interviews? in those early stages, do you remember how you built consensus around what you and your team would then actually go build and implement on behalf of the agencies? Yeah, it's, you know, there's a couple different avenues to look at. I suppose one is more of what's truly an enterprise statewide. System or capability, right? And then there's 1 approach and then there's a mission specific. Approach for that particular agency. You know, I try to meet every single 1 of our new employees that come through when we hire him. I always get the same speech. I'm sure they make fun of me behind the scenes for saying it, but always tell everybody we have 36. Agencies that we support, so we have 37 missions that we need to support. Right? We have art. Right? Which is how do how do you optimize it? How do you get our arms around things? How do you ensure the things we talked about? Like governance and security and frameworks around there. And that's that's important because that controls or that keeps your arms around the sprawl that's out there. Right? If not, there's a new startup, a new technology every single day. Right? Pretty cool thing, right? That that whenever business users saw a conference somewhere, or got a cold call on it, they're like, yeah, this will solve my problems. Let's just do that. Right? Yeah. So, having that that piece in place just, you know, just absolutely essential to be getting that from the front part of that piece. Yeah. And then you got to understand the other 36 missions. Which are direct client agencies and support, right? Brandon Ragle (11:15.588) will it be a department of revenue or state police or health and human services or who that is. They'll have very unique missions, to serve the residents. And so we have to kind of take that and shift a little bit to say, okay, very specifically. How do we support you in your mission? So, we get the prioritization. It's a, there's a couple levels of that. It's it's obviously prioritizing what we can in enterprise 1st approach. Like, what can we do with enterprise 1st approach? And then focus on, know, what the administration would like to do, of course, and we're funding that and there are times that we all can think there's some great ideas out there. There may not be the funding to support that. And so there's a couple different tracks you take to kind of deliver that down. So, essentially, we'll have, you know, 37 different. Prioritization metrics is at the agency's funded independently. Not there's not 1 centralized budget. And so it's working with each of those and their priorities to make sure that they get what they need first. So from that perspective. So funding doesn't come from your department. So you don't pay for everything that you build for the agencies. They have to have money allocated to partner with you. So you provide labor, but they still need to pay for like the vendor subscriptions. Is that how it works? So the funding model that we have is really, it's a cost recovery model at the end of the day. To kind of explain that a little bit more is let's say that one of the agencies, they have a priority this next year, they are next two years or whatever, they need to get this done. It's a very programmatic view that they're looking at that in. And a large portion of that, or maybe a portion for sure, will involve IT needs. So we'll work with them on what that cost is. Khullani Abdullahi (13:06.318) you they'll advocate right for the funding they'll they'll manage their funding from that perspective. So we're essentially like it kind of like you can think of like a third party provider in that space. We will provide the labor will work with our partners our vendor partners and get contracts in place. And that is where some of the enterprise value volume is obviously it's from large scale contracts and then we'll work with them to implement that. And then there's a cost recovery mechanism between us and them right to make sure. Interesting. Brandon Ragle (13:37.974) That they're getting what they what they've asked for right with what they need in that perspective. So, yeah, it's definitely it's it's a flow in. So we, basically accept the liabilities of private business mentality. Right? It says, do the work and then we're going to send you a bill for the work. Right? And so there's. Okay, that I for some reason I thought on and I think this is probably true for most of us outside of government. I thought you had a pot of money and then everybody was everyone was trying to track you down for their ID budget needs and asking you to propose. I think that I think that's even it's almost that as if you were a consultant to them as well. Right? Like it's a consultant advisory relationship, which is probably is probably less fraught than if everybody was banging on your door asking for money and the development work. Yeah, I mean, there's there are days I wish they gave us the money directly, even then there's days I realize that may cause some bigger headaches. If you're right, because then everybody wants something for free. Every day they'd be asking for discounts and now you don't have to deal with that. That's interesting. I need to learn more about different funding mechanisms, but that's something that I was not aware of. Something that you shared early on was you were a corrections officer in the 90s. so people like you who hear about a technology and then shift their entire career are rare, right? so that means that tells me that you are an early adopter. Khullani Abdullahi (15:09.87) and you see trends and then you shifted your career. So I would love to hear, like, have you had any other moments with technology where you thought, this is momentous, this is gonna change everything, whether it was big data or IoT or AI, like, since that moment, have you had other moments where you've, like, seen trends in technology and thought, okay, this will change not just how I do my work, but maybe society. You know, easy the easy button on that was AI right? That's what everybody's saying is that the most recent and then there have been some over over the years, but you just can't go without as much as we're numb of hearing the term AI. It's real. So what was your, what was your AI moment? Like what was the moment that you first used it or saw it or, and you thought, huh, and it forced you to pause. You know, in the early days, I really tried to research and read and understand it better, right? Because I, yeah, I remember grappling with my mind, like, okay, how is this really going to work? And this was just a long time ago. And we started using it behind the scenes. I'm like, trying to understand how is this different than automation? How is this different than this? And what is machine learning really doing? I think when it became to the point with the realization with everybody, I guess, is when You could get to the point of sitting down and have a personal assistant. I mean, that's at the end of the day, it's like, okay, you we've made that journey. We've gone through a lot of good things, but until you become and get that personal assistant, we have 55,000 end users that we support from a technology standpoint. And to be able to say, hey, I know you do these things. You know, we need to help you to be more efficient. Who couldn't be more efficient? Khullani Abdullahi (16:39.149) Yeah. Brandon Ragle (17:02.156) without some type of personal system by their side. And that's when you start seeing, okay, now people in order to start thinking differently, because not only so societally it changes because now my work isn't it may have seen repetitive in the past. I may have done a lot of things in the same motion in the past, may have done it for years. But now I have this this guide that I can use that makes me think differently, right? I need to think a little more analytical. I to a little more. I need to start thinking about how do I do this and adjust the way I think to be able to leverage these tools to remain efficient or even get more efficient or more accurate. Quite frankly, in some cases, right in that space. So, you know, I guess it was a duration. I couldn't tell exactly when in that that that journey because I can remember over decade ago, right? Sitting down and discussing AI and but when it became the realization that what your fingertips. And you saw the response back from a generative perspective. That was like, okay, this is this is out of the gate and it's gone. And here we are. Yeah. Right. Khullani Abdullahi (18:08.494) It's not coming back. Did you get a lot of executives? I'll just give you the preface to this question. A lot of executives over the last two years have been receiving emails and links and Teams messages and Slack messages from their teams who are like, can I sign up for this? May I have access to this? Now, in the non-IT space, it's a very different conversation. In the IT space, What were those early conversations with your team? Like, what were people requesting? What were they sharing? And how did you draw a box around it so that you didn't have the IT leaders in the state of Illinois, willy-nilly, signing up for random things? Like, what does that process look like? What were those? It's it's funny because those conversations were were more rapid and not as coordinated or as you would think, right? especially coming from it later. And then you have the business folks too. That I consider more power earlier adopters from a business side that were like, hey, I. I really want this. want to do this. It's super cool. And I think it's going to solve all these problems that I have. And that's that goes back to, know, governance. Architecture, you have to foundations, right? Yeah, the foundations from a centralized perspective. You know, our role is really to, you know, set those barriers, set those guidelines, make sure from a cyber view, we have it from a data privacy view. We have this right from legality views. have this. Those in place and so the conversations are a little different depending on the audience. Right? but if it was 1 of our leaders, I'm, I'm like, that is this what outcome we're trying to get from this. And are we sure that it's foundationally structured and aligned? Right? And so, but when the business partners that would have this conversation with it was more. Let me understand what problems you're trying to solve. Right? And let's work through that process. And so it's always a little bit of different conversation, but then in the day, it all came down to. Foundationally, do we have the guard rails in place to be successful long term? Not just tomorrow, but in 5 years from now, we'll be wishing we wouldn't have done something right. Khullani Abdullahi (20:23.614) Right, right. Do you do you have a philosophy or a set of principles around AI that shape how you interface with it in your organization? I actually, I'm going to support her to be honest with you and I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I advocated from day one that I feel like you have to get it at your fingertips again. You have to have foundation. You have to have the structure in place. Right? We have to make sure we have our guard rail. We're fully compliant. We're entrusted in the government with a lot of 13 million people data. Right? At the end of the day, there's certain things we have to make sure. That we're protecting from there, but be very creative. You know, I have a philosophy of, you know, state, say, curious state passion, right curiosity passion. That drives innovation that gets you in there and you only do it if you your fingers on it. So let's find a mechanism that we can put on place to get it at your fingertips early that we know is in a protected environment to really allow you to grow and learn and do things yourself. Otherwise, it just gets stagnant, right? And once you get stagnant, the elevation dies. Yeah, as you infrastructure, the scale at which in which you and your team have to deliver services is pretty significant. I mean, there are before the call, we were talking about the Netherlands AI strategy. The Netherlands has like 20 million people, right? Like there are countries that are approximately the size of the state of Illinois. Right. And so at least in Europe. So like the scale at which you have to deliver services is pretty significant. What are Khullani Abdullahi (22:09.592) How do you ensure that the infrastructure foundations and capabilities are kind of that baseline? What is that? What does good governance mean for you? And how, how do you, when people try to stray from that path, how do you kind of bring them back into these kind of central fundamental principles that are guiding the organization? You know, there's a couple things to think about, you know, when we talk about the foundations of this work. Identity management got to be top of the list, right? All AIs based on who I am, what I can do, what I have access to, what data I can get to. So, we have to have a good understanding of the foundation of do we have good identity access management in place? Do we have a good, obviously from that's from the cyberface. Do you have good data governance in place? Right? Just because I may have access rights. Do we have the proper governance in place from a data perspective to be able to wall me off if I need to be walled off from there? To get that from that space and then it's from the physical infrastructure. Right? That is from, you know, we, you know, so we, we do leverage our partners a lot. We leverage some, some of our hyperscalers and some of our cloud partners to be able to. brain. Brandon Ragle (23:33.198) to be able to scale those things, knowing that, you know, it make sense for us to try to do that piece from an infrastructure space. So we do have a more of a hybrid model partnership, I guess, if you will, with them. Is Illinois multi-cloud? We currently have or we are what we try to contain it the best we can, but we are multi cloud. We have a lot of. Your preference is that we not be multi-cloud, but we ended up there. It's good from a resiliency standpoint though, right? Yeah, we are. We are both a cloud for sure. We do have we have a lot of it's through our third parties to a lot of our partners. So we may partner with someone who provides us a service. I mean, maybe it's a SAS or maybe it's a pass that someone support or they have a managed service. I think that we have a footprint in them. But for us managing the cloud, having the skill sets in the workforce in place to manage multiple clouds becomes challenging. Right? So we try to make sure we get. Khullani Abdullahi (24:37.341) Yeah, one thing that I kind of want to pull out from like the conversation about having those guardrails and that infrastructure is I would, has AI major the job and the mission easier or harder in the last two to three years? Because it's been a sprint. So as you kind of reflect on 2023 to 2026, January to February 2023 to 2026, Has AI made it meaningfully different, harder, easier, more interesting for sure, but from a work standpoint, in a leadership. Yeah, I think it's in some cases that's made it easier. Some cases made it harder, right? It's, but in both cases, it's made it more exciting and fun to be truthful with you. I like it's definitely raised awareness with some of our business partners about technology. know, that, you know, technology just isn't your laptop or, you you get in there, you get on your email and you do your stuff that there's more to it than that. Right. And so the innovative side of people have come out, whether it be from the business or the technical side, you just start thinking about the art of the possibilities in there. So that makes it more exciting and actually makes it a little more fun because you get more engagement with your business partners in those spaces, which is a double-edged sword because like I say, then if there's a need for something very specific that a business partner comes in and says, hey, I want to use this tool. To do this job is like, well, that's great. Not compliant with the federal state compliance laws that we have or or we can't come to terms and conditions on on for data privacy issues. And so those that brings more challenging from the back in foundational piece of that governance side of house. Khullani Abdullahi (26:26.744) Right. That's really interesting. It strikes me that now it's not just your own AI usage, it's the AI usage of all your vendors and all of your partners that you also need visibility into and that you also need to manage from a risk standpoint. I hadn't thought about that piece. So a lot of AI offensive cybersecurity tools have proliferated and Illinois and its health organizations and the state self are a target. So how are you thinking about cybersecurity? What's keeping you up at night as the state CIO? And where does AI fit in that in that like offense defense balance? As you think about like how cybersecurity might be transformed in that in this AI world? So, I hasn't changed our need for cyber security. Right? I mean, it's just that it's done anything. It's enhanced. But if you foundation, right? If you have to have certain foundations of cyber security in place, no matter what, right? If, it is involved and not, but it definitely what is done is it's exposed weakness weaknesses more not just with cyber security anywhere. Right? And so. If you want to be really good and foundationally set to implement AI solutions, know, those foundations of, like I said before, the identity access management, the data governance and any weaknesses you have in those spaces are now magnified and now much more visible, right? To get to. So that's really where, you know, to keep you up at night is, are we prepared to find out foundationally that to make sure that we have a secure and modern. pieces that we need in place to kind of move forward. There's always going to be advancements in the bad actors coming in and leveraging the AI themselves, right? To try to come in and do what they want to do or try to do and our defense mechanisms in there. But at end of the day, it's all about foundations, right? It's all, you have to have those dots checked. But yeah, it's. Brandon Ragle (28:44.386) So it's helped a little bit to be honest with you, because it has shown some areas like, gosh, I guess over time we've not focused in maybe in that space very well. Right. And so maybe we need to double on over there and focus on that. Right. Or of a maturity perspective as you're kind of growing an organization from there. Right. Is there any area where you you wouldn't want AI embedded or to be like augmenting work in your organization? Are there, so for example, in healthcare, I often hear my clients say things like, well, we want delivery to remain as human. AI to help around. But when it comes to direct patient care, we really want it to be human first. As a CIO of a state the size of Illinois, are there places or pockets you and your team have identified? Well, we really don't want AI in this piece, but we want it in all of these other pieces. Or because you're a technology organization, are you guys kind of comfortable with AI permeating every element of the department? You know, that's there are areas right that are high risk that that we do look at saying we don't want to really jump in to this piece. They earlier we talked about, you know, everybody having their personal assistant right from more of a generative perspective. You know, even they're getting guard around that is challenging. So we look at the outcome we're trying to produce and then the risk value. Right. And, you know, to. Today, if you think you might have if a government may have weaknesses, maybe an understanding what their data is, it's been 30 plus 40 plus 50 plus years and sitting around. Right. There's there's pockets that that you'll know. It's like, okay, we need to we need to wall this off. Those are more from technology view versus a business capability view. Right. Right. It was more of a business capability. Right. And that space. Brandon Ragle (30:54.446) I would double down on that right in those spaces, right? Anything that has anything to do with certain information, know, HIPAA, PIPAA, know, any type of both that type of PII information or sensitive data, we definitely will look at strongly, right? There's gotta be a lot of controls, a of mechanisms around that space and understand is the risk worth the reward or the outcome that you're trying to get to? way And a lot of times in today's world in 2026, it's not there. Right? It's you have to make sure that you're balanced on what can you keep arms around securely in that space. I know you can't go into details of specific vendors and products, but I'd love to ask about kind of strategy. So a lot of companies, and I'm assuming government organizations, spent 2023 and 2024 experimenting with AI. 2025, it felt like there was a lot of implementation. Where do you think this... Where would you get to as a state CIO? then also, where would you like to get to? So for you, you know, if they say, you know, I don't know who they is, it's executive branch. the governor, sorry, Governor Pritzker, if Governor Pritzker calls you up and he says, Brandon, you know, what is our Illinois AI look like in 2030? Khullani Abdullahi (32:34.956) What will you, what would you say to him in terms of like the vision and then where are we in the curve towards that vision? Like what does an optimal state AI implementation look like from at the level at which you do your work? So, I guess to give a little bit of background on where we're at today. Right? And so last year, last April, actually. We published our statewide policy. That was kind of a, okay, there's many steps before that, but we'll call it step 1 for the discussions to this. I guess for this purpose of this discussion. So we should have statewide policy. We worked with all of our clients, client agencies. And really help them to understand from a literacy standpoint. What is this? What is AI? So we focused on the governance model with the policy and governance framework and then focus on literacy. Let's start educating folks on what this is. I earlier, I'm big believer on putting in the hands of people when you can, right? To be able to learn and grow on it. Since then, we've rolled out a productivity copilot chat. Right, right. Brandon Ragle (33:47.554) To actually to be very blunt about it to all all state users that have a outlook, a license or a, okay, we are in our shop as public so we can talk about that piece. But then we did roll it out. In a certain level where we felt that had been hardened down. that, know, all the, the lawyers in the room, the security specialist and data specialist, they all got in room together and said, okay, we've we've pardoned this down at the best we can. To be able to do that, so that's the putting in the fingertips. where you can and then we, we launched a training programs for all state employees. It's all state employees have access to training program. That's just basic. It's what is AI, right? What it, what does it mean? And how do you leverage that AI that type of guidance and training from there from that perspective? Additionally, we've, we've identified a few very specific use cases over this last year that we've put into production. There are more. Excellent high reward, low risk type things that stuff like, um, spanning policies or looking at legislation and looking for things may provide a case workers as an example. A quicker able to to diagnose and read things rather than spend an hour's trying to research. Let's let's help pull this together pretty common use case in government and we've we've learned that a bit. Additionally, we're in the process of hiring the 1st ever. Chief officer, which would be in our office perspective and that that role that person really to continue this journey. Right? We're setting the framework up. We have the policies. We have a statewide policy. We're working with every client agency that we have, making sure that they have a policy in place. We have training literacy to all employees. We have some very specific business driven use cases that are shown by return. Now, we really want to get that continue that journey by getting that that chief officer in and making sure we keep. Our arms around that right? That's a, that's a pretty easy job in these world that they make sure have that. Yeah, and they continue to work and to make sure that we have our agencies are using responsible. Honestly, so, right close on that 1, I'm hoping I was hoping they would have it. In January, but now I'm hoping, you know, like, in the Q1 will hopefully have that role. Bill. That's that's. Khullani Abdullahi (36:11.95) Excellent. And if you were to get a call from a CIO leader in another state who was not as far along in the process, right? What advice would you have for them if they said, Brendan, the governor is asking me about our AI strategy. And what did you do in Illinois? How did it go? What would you do differently? What advice and kind of feedback would you give them? if they were early in their journey. You know, I, we talked about a little bit before to its foundations, you there for the, you'd make it also that, you know, 23 in those timeframe, there's a lot of pilot a lot of things that were happening. Right? Right. It's not about how fast. You get the, it's helping you make it responsible, sustainable long term and to do that, right? Have those foundations in place. So my recommendation to them is really making sure your operations model, your governance model. Yes. Brandon Ragle (37:13.546) you've checked the boxes on identity. You've checked the boxes on on data, you know, architecture, you know, integrations. To really make sure you have those foundations in place, because this isn't a, this isn't going away tomorrow. and there's a lot of activity you can get today to still get the quick wins if you will. Right. But we have that foundation in place because I'm a big believer you kind of touched on a little bit earlier, but. You know, this AI does represent a generational opportunity. of how state government works, right? It just, is. And I'm excited about it. But that means that what we do today is gonna affect the people that come behind us. And we gotta make sure that we've set it up correctly, make sure the foundations are in place so that the people behind us are trying to clean up a mess. I'm sure we're gonna make mistakes. Let's at do what we can do right. Right. One piece that I meant to ask about that we touched a little bit on earlier was when you, so your philosophy is get AI into the hands of people in a responsible, safe, scalable manner that has governance around it. I've heard from employees at other organizations, fears around AI, right? And so, Not everybody is ready to adopt the technology. Not everyone really understands the technology, especially in IT where, like, for example, just this week, the CEO of Stripe said that his engineers haven't written any code since December. 100 % of the code has been AI generated. And so I don't know what those engineers are doing. Well, I do know, but there's a lot of fear. about workforce transitions. So as a leader, I would love to hear you talk about what it means to encourage and bring people on who maybe have some fears around AI and how you guys do that in-house, not just for the agencies you partner with. And then also, has AI changed how you think about hiring? Has AI changed how you think about staffing in the present and in like the upcoming future? And so, and how should people start thinking about their careers Khullani Abdullahi (39:29.902) in light of AI. You know, it's a little funny story I'll share and I won't hold any names, I'll this is one of our senior leaders in our organization who is not an IT. Yes, I obviously a state agency. We have other groups as well, but I've been advocating this person in their role. I'm like, you know, I believe that there's value in trying some of these things. I think that you'll find it and there was complete resistance. Yes, and then about a week ago. This person came to me and says, oh my gosh, where has this been in my life? And so I joked with this person. like, you know, it's kind of like that when you've got your first smartphone and you're able to like see what's up playing at the movie theater or something without having to go to the, you know, it's like this is Tiffany's like, wow, this is pretty cool, right? And so just, you seeing those things, you know, so as a leader, like you said, I am a big believer in putting in the hands of people. Recognizing not everyone's going to adopt it. We have some of our that have said no. Thank you. No. Thank you. Turn it off. We don't see the value. I believe those will change. I think they'll have a right at moment at time. And so we'll be ready. Right. We're ready. We'll different things. When they're, yeah. Brandon Ragle (40:53.762) But when they start seeing what their peers are doing in these use cases are being successful on them, that's when they're going to realize, okay, I mean, I do need to rethink this from a staffing perspective. You know, I'm a firm believer in our world. In our world, especially that there is no intent to try to replace a person. It is this is a tool to support a person to be more efficient. Right. I I mentioned earlier it. It may mean you need to think about your job a little differently. How do I think about I still have these things I need to do these widgets I need to produce, but I may need to think about how I do that differently by use of these tools. It's just another tool in the toolbox to hopefully make you more efficient. So when we, know, from a just not too long ago, she's talked to my HR director about, when do we start looking at our job descriptions? And, you know, is there is there there point that. We change the desired skills and things like required skills, but do we start adding things in there about analogical thinking and things like that that may make problem solving a bigger piece versus repetitiveness, right? So, yeah, it's evolving. Yeah, that's excellent. I I thank you for sharing your like staffing philosophy because I think it gives employees. I always encourage leaders to be very honest. If AI is going to impact jobs, tell people upfront so that they can start retraining and so that the company and the organization can help them. And if it's not, also tell them and be upfront so that they can relax and be more creative. and bought in when they're using these technologies. And so being able to make a statement like that, think, will provide a lot of comfort to your, know, the thousands of people who work for you. From an adoption standpoint, something that you said, I think, earlier that has been a thread throughout is the need to like have new mental models and new ways of thinking because of these technologies. Khullani Abdullahi (43:08.078) How has the use of AI changed the way that you think of your own work? And how do you use it in your own You know, it has it has helped me. Honestly, it's helped me. It's helped me grow as a professional to be honest with you because it makes me when I, I'm thinking differently, I am thinking more. Even though I told myself, I was always thinking about outcomes and thinking more about outcomes. Now, what am I trying to outcome? I'm trying to get to because that's that's what my the tool that I may be using is to help me to get to that outcome. So I really got to focus on need more. That I thought I focused on a lot in the past. I thought that's all I could say. It's definitely shifted my mentality and helped. I think it's helped me as professional to be more up skilled and trained and more efficient. In that perspective, yeah. And so I think it's great because I think what you shared is at all levels, whether you're a you know, IT leader or information officer or like a brand new developer, there's ways of growing and changing with these new technologies and growing alongside them. And as you, as you, if you had to give somebody graduating from college a little piece of advice, what skill do you think they'll need that? you and I didn't need when we were graduating from those early years. We both have the gray hair brightness, so no one's going to believe you and I are recent graduates. Brandon Ragle (44:36.758) It might be the lighting. think it's a lot of you might be here. Maybe you know it's funny. I have two daughters. I didn't share that earlier. I two daughters and they're in their mid early mid 20s and so they're both out of college and doing their thing right and I tell them both the same thing. It all first comes with your your mentality. You're positive. That doesn't change though. I think but I think it's more relevant more prevalent today right right? right? Khullani Abdullahi (44:59.786) Bye. Brandon Ragle (45:05.784) Probably back in the day, it was very technical skills, right? You had to be very focused on when I graduated college, I needed to know how to do these things. Right? Where today I feel like it's when I get out of school, it's am I able to think problems through to a solution and just keep that curiosity going no matter what? There's no end, right? It's not a black and white or an endpoint to endpoint. It's continued mindset of being able to think, well, what's next? What's next? What's next? And how do we continually just keep evolving this thought process and realize there is going to be a next and there is going to be a better response and it is going to grow and it is going to grow. I feel like today that's even more important in past. I think we'll focus on it more. Right? Because I. Just because of the nature of the work that we're doing so that right that positive mentality, the positive attitude and willingness is just to jump in and even though you don't know anything about it. Learning with it. I love it. Thank you so much. I want to give you a chance to give us some final thoughts. So, if you could choose one AI capability that state government must get right, what would it be? gosh, once the government, the state government is right. You know, there's actually a couple, right? But I'm going to go with ID and access management, just the overall framework, just the foundations of it. It's Foundational right? You have to be able to know I am Brandon and I'm on the computer and I'm right. Khullani Abdullahi (46:34.092) That's the foundation. Khullani Abdullahi (46:43.394) So does that mean no agents? Because how are you going to do identity access with agents? There is there's gotta be control mechanism right Brandon I have to interview you again because we didn't even talk about agents. That's a whole episode. I'm going to call you up at the end of the summer. Okay, what would you consider to be the most overrated AI trend right now? What makes you just roll your eyes? Yeah Brandon Ragle (47:06.526) yeah, we touched on earlier. It's the, it's the, it's the, my gosh, it's gonna solve my problem today. Let's do it today. Let's get it out. Right? It's just gonna. It's like, it's, it's, it's not just something I just go download or click on something and then my problems have solved. Right? There is this like magic. No, it's not magic. And so there is a process. There is a lot of things to go behind that. So that's the overrated thing. I hear all the time. Here we go again. I gotta explain this again. It's not. sign up for Khullani Abdullahi (47:35.89) If I just had this tool, Brandon, I wouldn't have any problem. Let me sign up for it. love it. Deep dish or thin crust? People fight over the deep dish. It would stop. Brandon Ragle (47:44.364) Deep death. And then final thoughts for leaders who are trying to stay up to date. For you, I think it's a little easier because this is in your domain and real house. What if I'm a leader of a nonprofit, but I'm an executive and people are looking to me for leadership? How do I know how to stay up to date so I can communicate key air signals and not just drown in the noise? You know, this is going to be a little side off of what you asked anyway, right? It's it's to ensure yourself and recognize yourself. That's not about the technology. Whatever you're trying to solve is not about the technology. Now, there's a technology out there that's going to help you and grow and those things. so having that mindset, that business philosophy in mind, it's to be so important from a people, but to be successful. And to recognize that. Right. Brandon Ragle (48:46.818) You know, there's there's one thing that quick wins. Yeah, and there's another thing to run a 50 yard dash and there's anything to run a marathon. And you understand what you're trying to accomplish here. And if you're if your pieces are in place, it's sometimes it's not to be the best at the 50 yard dash. Sometimes it's better to be better at the marathon and to keep that in focus that you're not going to solve this problem tomorrow because there's so many there's so many great. Who are self people that are trying to sell things that may seem like going to solve everything, but sometimes it doesn't always solve the long term. Right? It may solve tomorrow. But not the long term problem. So, so keep that in mind. It's not just about technology. Understand the people understand the process. Make sure you have the foundations in place and make sure from the sustainability perspective. You're thinking about the long term. Excellent. What a wonderful way to end, including all the sports analogies, Brendan. I love them. Quick wins, a sprint or a marathon. I might steal that for my workshops. What stage are we at, team? So I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. I think you've given people a window into how state CIO leaders are thinking about AI. And I think this might be the you might be the first state CIO leader. Khullani Abdullahi (50:09.272) published in that claim, the noise headed the curve. think. Thank you. Brandon Ragle (50:20.334) This looks.