San Jose's new CIO wants his city to become 'the hub for government innovation'

Source: StateScoop by Colin Wood

Nearly three months into his role as San Jose, California’s chief information officer, Khaled Tawfik told StateScoop that he believes data is “the future of government” for his city.

Tawfik, who took the San Jose job in April after several years as CIO of Irvine, in Southern California, is building on a series of city initiatives aimed at improving broadband access and ensuring municipal services are delivered equitably to its diverse population. The most recent, announced last week, is the Equity through Data and Privacy Program, which will use $750,000 from the Knight Foundation to improve city services over the next three years.

Khaled Tawfik (LinkedIn)

City officials said last year that chatbots had been upgraded so they can speak in the more-than 100 languages used by San Jose residents. San Jose has also experimented with using cryptocurrency, mined by devices connected to Wi-Fi hotspots, to close its digital divide, along with more traditional broadband programs.

“There’s a lot of good work that’s been started and a lot of progress that’s been made, and what I’m trying to do is aggregate all of these initiatives and create a comprehensive and enterprise program to really maximize the benefit of these initiatives and how they can relate to each other,” Tawfik said.