Going public: Corporate CIOs make the shift to government IT leadership

As a fourth-grader Greg Lane had wanted to be a math teacher. But when he later entered the workforce, he did so as a technologist, building an IT career over a 35-year stint first at DuPont and then at Chemours, a DuPont spin-off.

Having worked his way up to global CIO, Lane left Chemours in 2016 to become a strategic advisor for tech startup Ramessys.

Although Lane tutored students for years, he pretty much put aside his early ambitions to work in the public sector — until he was invited to reconsider. James Collin, a professional connection who was at that time Delaware State CIO, asked Lane if he would be interested in stepping into the vacant CTO role.

Lane acknowledges that the move may seem unusual, “but it was an ask of a trusting person that made it easy to say yes,” he says.

“I said I would work for the state, I’d give it a year and then go back to Corporate America. That was seven and a half years ago. The year went by, then a little more than that, then COVID hit, and you blink and three more years pass. I’ve been here a bit longer than I thought,” he says.

Lane became CIO of Delaware State in July 2023, with the governor asking if he’d take on the chief IT role following Collin’s 2020 departure and the tenure of an interim CIO.

Lane, a native of Wilmington, the state’s capital, and a long-time state resident, says his personal ties to Delaware influenced his decision to serve in the state’s government; the strength of the state’s IT department and its culture influenced his decision to stay.

“I was blown away by the breath of technology used in the state and the services offered,” he says.

So, too, did his ability to see the state IT department’s impact on Delaware residents.

“That made it very easy to stay,” Lane adds.

A shift to service leadership

Every CIO has a unique professional journey, but Lane’s experience moving from a lengthy IT career in the private sector to a public sector CIO role illustrates the opportunities that IT leaders see in making such a move.

At the same time, Lane and other CIOs who have made the same career shift say the public sector presents unique challenges, such as testifying before lawmakers, navigating complex funding and procurement rules, and accepting lower pay.

Is the move worth it, then? Lane and others say yes.

“There’s an ability to deliver services that make a difference in people’s lives. If that’s what motivates you, then the public sector is [a good opportunity],” Lane explains. “It might not be right for everyone, or the right choice for someone at a particular time, but it can be extremely rewarding and it’s a great way to get experiences that you might not otherwise get.”

Denise Reilly-Hughes has had a similar journey.

She was named deputy secretary of the Agency of Digital Services for the State of Vermont in January 2023, becoming the state’s secretary of ADS and CIO in September 2023.

Previously Reilly-Hughes worked for several private companies, including Microsoft, where she worked with government entities as a client director and customer success manager.

That work exposed her to the technical and digital transformation challenges and opportunities in government — and, like other CIOs, she saw the ability to use her skills to make a difference.

So when in 2022 former client and then-Vermont State CIO Shawn Nailor asked her to work for the state, “without hesitation, I said yes,” Reilly-Hughes says.

Now, nearly two years into working for the state, “every day has been rewarding,” she adds.

Public and private sector similarities, differences

Reilly-Hughes, a nearly 20-year Vermont resident, also calls out the challenges of serving as a public CIO. Some of those difficulties are similar to what all CIOs face; others are unique to the public sector.

Like all CIOs taking a new role, joining the state’s IT department meant learning her new employer’s culture, for example. But unlike moving between corporate jobs, as a new state executive she also had to learn about the unique business processes that exist only within government and its uniquely complex funding practices.

Then there was learning how to work through the bureaucracy — which Reilly-Hughes encountered in private companies but found existed in more layers in the public sector. “Public and private both have it; it’s just that the red tape is in different places,” she explains.

Despite the unique dynamics of the private sector, Reilly-Hughes says she applies the same strategies — such as agile practices, customer experience principles, and continuous improvement — as do her commercial-side IT colleagues.

“I can say I have never worked so hard in my life,” she says. “There’s a perception that government works slow, but I haven’t seen that. It’s very fast paced, and there’s a lot going on.”

Public/private sector cross-pollination

Kurt DelBene was similarly drawn by the service aspect of public sector work, but he, like others, says there are multiple factors at play. For example, he took on his current role because “I was jumping into something where there was clearly a need,” he says.

DelBene is the US Department of Veteran Affairs assistant secretary for information and technology and CIO. He was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the US Senate in December 2021; it’s a hiring process unlike anything in the private sector.

It’s not his first foray into government work. DelBene had served as a senior advisor to the US Health and Human Services secretary from December 2013 to July 2014, helping to turn around the troubled Healthcare.gov launch.

On the private sector side, DelBene spent more than 30 years at Microsoft — including nearly 10 years as an executive vice president — in addition to working at Bell Laboratories, McKinsey & Co., and Madrona Venture Group.

DelBene sees his move into government jobs as an opportunity to “cross-pollinate,” bringing private sector best practices to public IT departments and learning from the unique scenarios that exist in the government.

For example, drawing from his tenure at Microsoft, DelBene reorganized the VA IT department to be product-focused where each function had clear alignment with its stakeholders and their objectives.

He stresses the need to “ruthlessly” prioritize and measure progress using objectives and key results (OKRs). He cultivates a collaborative work environment, holding standup meetings every morning so workers can share progress and learn from mistakes. And he stresses continuous modernization instead of big-bang transformations, which have a higher failure rate.

DelBene believes more cross-pollination between private and public IT departments is needed, to more quickly bring the best practices that typically emerge first in the corporate world to the government and also to allow more workers to learn from the opportunities in government work — such as the scale and scope of public-sector IT work.

DelBene manages a budget of approximately $5 billion, leads a workforce of some 16,000 government and contract staffers, and provides tech services to more than 3,000 locations.

“We need more people crossing over from private to public because there are not enough people to build software at scale and to bring those best practices from the private sector to the public,” he says. “And it helps when workers move back to the private sector, because [they] then learn from the perspective here, where the scale is huge.”

Using private sector experience to impact the public good

Michael Pegues became CIO for the City of Aurora, Ill., in June 2017 after first serving in the US Army and then advancing his tech career mostly in the private sector. His resume includes positions at AT&T, Quaker Oats, HP, and Morgan Stanley as well as the US Department of Defense.

Becoming a city CIO was not on his career roadmap until mayoral candidate Richard C. Irvin, one of Pegues’ childhood friends from their native Aurora, asked Pegues to join his team should he win.

Like any executive considering a new job, Pegues had conditions: He wanted a seat at the table, a direct or dotted line to the mayor, and the authority to drive transformation aligned to the mayor’s vision.

Pegues says he didn’t want government bureaucracy and its risk-adverse nature to limit his ability to affect change and improvement.

“Transformation isn’t a normal thing you see in the public sector; you don’t see the public sector doing a lot of innovation. It’s more known in the private sector or maybe in public-private partnerships,” he says. “But the mayor said he want to create a forward-thinking city, and I needed agility to [deliver that].”

Pegues became Aurora’s first CIO in June 2017, after Irvin became mayor; Pegues is still in that position today. He says he was walking into an unknown situation, where measures of success would not be typical business KPIs but rather his impact on the community and his service to the public.

“My job is to guide the City of Aurora’s technical landscape, to make it a smarter and more connected city, a better-run city, more inclusive and more prosperous by thinking about how to use tech and innovation to drive all that,” Pegues says. “That was a huge shift for me.”

Leaning into his skills, Pegues moved the city’s IT department from a decentralized model to a centralized one, curtailed the use of shadow IT, launched various transformational initiatives, brought agility to his team’s processes, and coached Irvin on tech-enabled possibilities.

In addition to multiple modernization projects and cybersecurity improvements, Pegues’s technology plan has a No Child Left Offline initiative which aims to bridge the digital divide among students; support for the Aurora STEAM Academy, another student-focused program; and expansion of the city’s fiber optic network to spur more economic development.

He acknowledges feeling frustrated early on but looking into the future he has a different perspective on his shift into the public sector: “This is definitely my legacy.”