Local governments face pressure to deliver services efficiently, equitably, and transparently amid limited resources. The City of Rancho Cordova is meeting this challenge by applying AI and data analytics to improve operations and decision-making.

Using computer vision and machine learning, the City is building a data-driven approach to spot issues in neighborhoods before they escalate—enabling proactive, equitable service delivery across functions like code enforcement, public works, and infrastructure maintenance.

This session highlights how Technology and Code Enforcement partnered to evaluate and implement AI solutions aligned with City priorities. Presenters will share lessons on governance, organizational readiness, and compliance with security, privacy, and ethical AI standards, offering a practical playbook for responsible, data-driven service delivery.

Ever wonder how to get city departments to agree on priorities—or even the same meeting time? Our Business Relationship Management team cracked the code, bringing IT, project managers, and department heads into real collaboration (without anyone running for the exit). Discover how the BRM team led structured brainstorming, brokered smart compromises, and transformed scattered ideas into a unified technology portfolio and roadmap. Leave with practical strategies—and maybe a good story or two—for turning cross-department chaos into a citywide game plan everyone stands behind.

Considered a universal truth: bureaucracy stifles brilliance. For decades, the idea of "innovating in government" has been dismissed as an oxymoron—a frustrating dead end filled with stories of waste.
But the City of Chattanooga didn't just break the mold; they shattered it. Witness the incredible true story of a transformation from the world's dirtiest city to the globally recognized "Gig City," one of the world's smartest and most connected metropolises.
Join Brent Messer, former Chief Information/Innovation Officer and best-selling author, as he reveals the leadership roadmap you can use to create a world-class IT group and drive Value-Driven innovation. He'll pull back the curtain on the hard-won successes and failures that cultivated radical innovation inside the walls of bureaucracy, despite endless challenges.

This session will be repeated at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28

Abstract:
We are collecting more data than ever—dashboards, performance reports, cross department metrics, and automated insights. Yet many local governments struggle with the “last mile”: transforming analytics into decisions, workflows, and measurable improvements for residents.
We need to share real examples of moving from information to implementation — showing how we can embed data into daily operations, change management routines, budget cycles, and long term planning. Learning practical techniques for making data actionable, including workflow redesign, culture-building, governance structures, low tech automation, and simple accountability mechanisms is our goal.

This discussion cuts through the buzzwords and focus on what works in resource constrained environments. Whether you are just beginning your data journey or already have multiple dashboards in place, you can leave with concrete strategies to ensure data leads to action, not shelfware.

Learning Objectives By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1. Identify common barriers that prevent data insights from driving real change.
2. Apply techniques for embedding data into operational and policy workflows.
3. Design routines and accountability structures that maintain momentum over time.
4. Evaluate progress and measure the real-world impact of data-driven decisions.

Ideal Audience: County administrators, department directors, analysts, elected officials, budget officers, IT managers, performance staff, and anyone responsible for data-informed decision making.

Leadership is an inside game. If you don’t understand how you lead yourself, you’re going to
have a difficult time learning to understand and effectively lead others. If you want to learn how
to use a computer effectively, you need to understand its operating system. This information
lies at the heart of understanding the human operating system.
In “The Neuroscience of Leadership,” we look at the underlying drivers of behavior and
motivation and their impact. When we understand how our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions can
influence our actions, we can learn to be more intentional and create the type of outcomes we
want, rather than spending time cleaning up the ones we didn’t.
Takeaways: Participants will learn more about their intrinsic motivators as well as understand
how those impact their thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and actions. Having this information is like
having the key to unlock the human operating system

A deep dive into three pivotal scientific studies to help attendees understand why social engineering is a “human problem” not a “stupid human problem”. Learn how to understand, mitigate, and defend against social engineering using science.

State and local government teams face relentless pressure to deliver public value across departments and constrained budgets — while keeping elected officials, administrators, and constituents informed and aligned. The way that gets solved is changing fast.

'Always-on' product intelligence is redefining how SLED teams surface signals, govern data, and prioritize initiatives with confidence. Predictive analytics, intelligent data integration, and emerging hybrid roles for product and technical leaders are turning vision into action — faster and with greater certainty.

In this session, you'll learn:

- How always-on listening transforms the discovery of community needs before priorities are set
- How predictive analytics and intelligent data integration sharpen prioritization across initiatives
- How hybrid roles — increasingly blending strategy, technical fluency, and design — are redefining public sector product leadership

Public sector organizations often struggle with fragmented systems and distributed workforces, making it difficult to deliver consistent communication and a connected employee experience. At the same time, managing multiple tools increases software costs, integration complexity, and administrative overhead.

Join the City of Mesa’s IT leadership as they share how they addressed these challenges by creating a unified digital hub that connects 6000+ employees across departments—from police and fire to utilities and administration.

In this session, you’ll learn how Mesa improved communication reach, enabled mobile access, introduced new ways to engage employees, and gathered meaningful feedback at scale—while also simplifying their technology landscape. Walk away with practical insights and strategies to modernize workforce communication, reduce tool sprawl, and improve operational efficiency without replacing your existing systems.

This session covers why OSINT is important for every CISO, including examples of CISOs Chris has worked with, which were compromised by their families, and how to protect them and be aware.

Learn from Salt Lake City's creation of a city-wide comprehensive privacy program. This session will include a sharing of resources for privacy training, policies, contract provisions, privacy impact assessments (PIAs), and more.

Why do so many government projects struggle despite having talented teams, competent vendors, and clear intentions? After 5years of active research into project delivery over the last 60years, a consistent conclusion emerges: projects succeed or fail based on the environment they are delivered in, not the effort of the people doing the work.

This session introduces 6 structural patterns repeatedly observed across well-documented public-sector failures. Though the sectors differ, the underlying characteristics remain the same: fragmented accountability, unclear ownership, procurement-driven distortion, unstable information environments, expertise suppression, and decision structures that make success accidental rather than repeatable. Each pattern is translated into plain operational language and paired with a simple diagnostic question leaders can apply before kickoff to assess whether their environment is “structured to succeed” or “structured to fail.” The emphasis is not on adding more process, committees, or documentation; instead, this session presents practical environmental adjustments that stabilize project delivery without increasing bureaucracy.

Attendees will leave with a lightweight, research-based diagnostic tool derived directly from the dissertation work. The model is designed for CIOs, PMOs, and public-sector teams seeking a clearer way to identify structural risks early, strengthen delivery environments, and increase the probability of success across IT, innovation, and cross-department initiatives.

Check out the latest in innovative public vehicles, brought to you by the City of Mesa! See what the next gen of Fire, Police, and Solid Waste vehicles can do.

Session Description:

In the face of aging infrastructure, tightening budgets, and evolving security threats, today’s major cities and counties are at a crossroads. The "status quo" of siloed systems—where cameras, access control, and alarms operate on disparate, legacy networks—is no longer sustainable. It’s time for a new architectural standard.

Join Verkada for an in-depth exploration of the modern municipal blueprint. We will move beyond the buzzwords of "Smart Cities" to discuss the practical application of integrated physical security. This session provides a roadmap for leaders to transition from reactive monitoring to proactive management, using a single-pane-of-glass approach that connects everything from public works and transit hubs to administrative offices and local parks.

Key Takeaways:

The Power of Consolidation: Learn how moving to a hybrid-cloud architecture eliminates the need for costly servers and simplifies cross-departmental collaboration.

Actionable Intelligence: See how AI-driven analytics (like People Analytics and Vehicle Tracking) empower rapid response for law enforcement and emergency services.

Operational Efficiency: Discover how to streamline facility management by automating routine security audits, managing site access remotely, and reducing the total cost of ownership for citywide infrastructure.

Scalability for the Future: Strategies for phased modernization that respect taxpayer dollars while ensuring your infrastructure is ready for the next decade of growth.

Who Should Attend:

This session is designed for City Managers, County Administrators, CIOs, Chief of Police, and Directors of Public Works who are tasked with balancing public safety with digital transformation.

The Goal: To leave this session not just with a vision, but with a tactical plan to build a more resilient, transparent, and connected municipality.

Most municipalities, counties and states want to provision their citizens and businesses with one account through which they can deliver a personalized dashboard. The challenge is how to consolidate the existing/legacy service specific identity siloes/accounts to enable a seamless citizen centric online experience.

This session will be focused on how to enable the transformation from siloed (fragmented eservices) to seamless (citizen centric) eservices and how to build the business case and road map to guide the transformation.

Each one of us is a unique creation. We all have different thoughts, feelings, desires, and goals. However, we also have many of the same patterns – including our habitual emotional patterns. We tend to operate in a reactive mode, merely interpreting incoming information and events, relating them to our previous experiences, and then responding without really being aware of why or how we’re doing it. As leaders, we need to take conscious control of our emotions if we are to respond effectively to the situations and challenges we face.

In “Emotional Intelligence: A Leader’s Most Powerful Skill,” Kevin investigates the latest research on emotional intelligence and offers methods for incorporating techniques that will help leaders at all levels to become more aware of their own emotional patterns, and to create more resourceful and effective responses to the challenges of their environment.

Participants will be introduced to the processes that drive their emotions – mostly on an unconscious level – and they’ll learn some new tools and strategies to begin to take more control of their “inner world” and respond more effectively even in situations that might otherwise cause anxiety, frustration, anger, or fear. They’ll learn proven strategies for managing their own emotions, and those of the people they work with. These skills are essential to success, and account for 85-90% of the difference between outstanding leaders and their more average peers.

Public agencies are moving from basic Generative AI tasks—answering questions and summarizing documents—to purpose-built agents that support real work. This session offers a practical, vendor-neutral roadmap for making that shift. We’ll clarify what “agents” mean in a government context and why they matter for speed, quality, and consistency.

Focusing on fundamentals rather than tools, we’ll cover purpose and scope, governance and risk guardrails, privacy and security, responsible data use, and human-in-the-loop practices. We’ll also touch on use-case prioritization and change management so pilots can scale sustainably. Throughout, we’ll share real examples that illustrate key decisions and tradeoffs, and we’ll present our roadmap showing how we advanced from isolated prompts to accountable agents. Participants will leave with a clear understanding of the principles and process to evolve city operations while maintaining public trust.

As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in local government operations, data governance has never been more critical—or more complex. In this session, Chris Neves, Director of IT for the City of Brighton, Colorado, and Bratton Riley, CEO of Citibot, will explore how municipalities can harness AI responsibly to ensure the integrity, accessibility, and ownership of their data. Through the lens of Brighton’s implementation, attendees will learn how AI-powered tools can support cross-departmental data coordination, improve internal workflows, and strengthen public trust. This conversation will offer practical, real-world insights for cities seeking to modernize their data governance strategies while remaining transparent, ethical, and resident-focused.

Traditional procurement processes often require extensive consultant involvement, highly detailed RFPs, and significant client effort to define technical solutions, frequently without improving project outcomes. This paper presents a simplified procurement approach that reduces complexity by leveraging contractor expertise, minimizing prescriptive RFP requirements, and shifting solution development away from the client. By focusing on clear objectives and performance metrics rather than exhaustive technical detail, the process allows contractors—who are best positioned to understand and solve complex problems—to propose optimal solutions. A case study of a public agency procuring a new wastewater treatment plant demonstrates how these simplifications reduced procurement effort, shortened timelines, and maintained accountability while achieving desired results. The paper also identifies client-side activities that consumed time and resources but did not affect contractor selection or final performance, illustrating how simplified, expertise-driven procurement can improve efficiency without increasing risk.

Come join us at the Conversation Café! Our goal in this session is for you to build connections with your peers in other municipalities / agencies that you can reference in the future. This session will be a “speed dating” format. Each table have 5 minutes to talk about what their agency is doing on a defined topic. Each agency has about a minute to provide this description. At the end of 5 minutes, you will change tables and the next topic will be announced. If you want to dive deeper into a conversation, please find your new friend at one of the many social opportunities during the conference!
Topic include:
Smart City Technologies: Exploring the implementation of IoT, AI, and other smart technologies to improve urban infrastructure and services.
Cybersecurity: Discussing strategies to protect municipal data and infrastructure from cyber threats and ensuring the privacy of citizens.
Data Management and Analytics: Utilizing big data to make informed decisions, enhance city planning, and improve public services.
Cloud Computing: Leveraging cloud solutions to increase efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of municipal services. SaaS PaaS
Digital Identity Solutions: Developing secure and user-friendly digital identity systems to facilitate access to municipal services and enhance citizen trust.

Overview: For today’s city and county leaders, the conversation has shifted from "preventing the perimeter breach" to "managing the inevitable." In a landscape where the window from initial access to full-scale exfiltration has shrunk to mere minutes, "resilience" is no longer a buzzword—it is a civic requirement.

Join Palo Alto Networks and a panel of seasoned public sector veterans for a candid discussion on the evolution of municipal cybersecurity. This session moves beyond the headlines of ransomware to explore the strategic "Day 2" realities of a breach: maintaining citizen trust, protecting critical infrastructure, and navigating the political complexities of a digital crisis.

Formats
Solution-focused session
Implementation and lessons learned

Target audience
CIOs, IT leaders, enterprise architects, cybersecurity leads, product owners.

Abstract
Agentic systems promise assistants that can sense, plan, and act... but what actually works in government? This session distills a practical playbook: start with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and single-agent patterns to ground answers; only scale to multi-agent orchestration when requirements demand distinct skills, parallelization, or independent verification.

We’ll cover a minimal architecture (LLM + retrieval + actions + memory), decision gates for right-sizing complexity, and guardrails like routing, validation, logging, and human-in-the-loop to keep systems safe and auditable. You’ll leave with templates and a one-page rollout plan to go from pilot to production, plus concrete metrics (accuracy, deflection, SLA hit-rate, ROI%) to prove value to leadership.

This will be based on the playbooks I've built for the GovAI Coalition and can provide attendees with checklists, test plans, and governance patterns they can adopt.

AI isn’t a pilot anymore. It’s becoming infrastructure.

Across government, AI has quietly moved from experiments and pilots into systems residents and staff now depend on. And that shift changes the job of IT.

The question is no longer whether AI works. It’s whether it’s being designed, governed, and supported like the foundational layer it’s becoming.

In this session, we'll break down:
• Why AI is following the same path as cloud and shared services
• What “AI as infrastructure” actually looks like in government
• How IT leaders can plan for scale, resilience, and long-term sustainability

This paper describes how a city organization transformed its procurement function by implementing a more structured, performance-based approach to project delivery. Central to this transformation was the introduction of a tracking system, a management tool used to track project success, procurement timelines, and risk—capabilities that did not previously exist within the organization. By simplifying RFP requirements and shifting focus from excessive documentation to measurable outcomes, the city achieved an estimated 50% reduction in procurement time and effort compared to its prior process. Analysis of the new data revealed that the primary bottlenecks were concentrated in the legal review and administrative components of RFP development rather than in technical evaluation. Using these insights, the organization established targeted safeguards to ensure procurements were compliant, transparent, and easily defensible while avoiding unnecessary complexity. The case study demonstrates how structured performance tracking and process simplification can significantly improve procurement efficiency without increasing risk or reducing accountability.

As AI continues to transform how organizations operate, establishing a strong foundation for governance, privacy, and security is critical—especially in the public sector. In this session, learn how one organization is pioneering an AI/Privacy Platform as a Service (PaaS) to centralize digital foundations, streamline AI governance, and elevate enterprise-wide management without adding staff.

Discover how collaboration with vendors and local municipalities has accelerated knowledge building, policy creation, and risk management. From AI model oversight to public engagement, cybersecurity, audits, and feedback loops, this session will showcase how a strategic, scalable approach can safeguard public trust while maximizing efficiency. Attendees will also gain insights into assessing organizational investment and resource planning to sustain an enterprise AI program well into the future.

Join us to explore a roadmap for responsible, sustainable, and scalable AI governance in local government—and leave with actionable strategies you can bring to your own organization.

This will be a panel discussion consisting of a Facilitator, 2 City Managers, and 1 County Manager as panelists. This session is designed to help IT Managers, Directors, and CIOs understand the “Dos and Don’ts” when presenting to their Executive Management Team, City Council, Official Committees, Board of Supervisors, or Board of Directors. Attending this session should have the individual leaving with at least 1 new tip/trick for putting together and delivering an effective presentation and an understanding of best practices to achieve the desired result (i.e., item is approved to proceed to the next logical step). Presentation style will be discussed (styles to embrace and styles to avoid) as well as type and level of content within the presentation (minute details vs. information appropriate for the audience).

Every city collects data. Most cities govern it. But is your data ready for machines to learn from it, and act on it? The shift from traditional data governance to AI-ready data governance is one of the most consequential but least understood challenges facing local government today. It's all about evolving from data governance that’s documentation-heavy, loosely enforced, and optimized for reports and dashboards, into something enforceable, observable, and machine-interpretable. This panel brings together three Arizona leaders who are tackling that evolution head-on, each from a different angle.

Join Deputy CIO Harry Meier of the City of Mesa as he moderates a candid conversation with Mesa Chief Data Officer Evan Allred, Tucson AI Program Manager Kate Carter, and Gilbert CIO Eugene Mejia. Together they'll explore what it actually takes to prepare municipal data for AI — from Mesa's decade-long investment in data-driven culture, to Tucson's community-centered approach to responsible AI, to Gilbert's hands-on experience scrubbing its data environment for Microsoft CoPilot readiness. Whether your city is just starting to think about AI or already deploying tools, this session will give you practical insights for bridging the gap between data that humans can trust and data that machines can reliably learn from (…and humans can still trust).

Step out of the conference and into something unforgettable.

After a full day of ideas, insights, and connections, picture this: you’re walking beneath towering dinosaur skeletons. A drink in hand. Conversations flowing with peers from across the WRITA region.

This isn’t just a reception. It’s your chance to connect in a setting you won’t find anywhere else.

Night at the Museum is included with a Full Conference Access pass. One-Day attendees and booth staff can purchase tickets to the event. Want to bring someone along? Companion tickets are available.

An interactive keynote on building values-driven collaboration across agencies and states. Berké blends story and behavioral science to show how culture, language, and everyday actions can unlock trust, accelerate shared problem-solving, and spread what works. Designed for practical application—leaders leave with ideas to strengthen collaboration back on the job.

This session explores the journey of implementing a modern data platform to handle large-scale utility data, particularly from Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). The presentation covers the transition from an on-premises SQL Server environment to a Azure Databricks solution that effectively manages millions of daily meter readings while providing self-service capabilities for data analysts.
Attendees will learn about:
• The business drivers behind the platform migration, including the need to handle millions of daily meter readings from 230,000 smart meters - and store billions of readings over the coming years.
• The evaluation process that led to selecting Databricks over alternatives
• Implementation timeline and architecture decisions
• Real-world applications built on the platform, including water leak detection, SCADA integration, and performance metrics forecasting
• Pros and Cons

City and county governments are under pressure to modernize aging infrastructures to simplify operations, gain efficiencies, enable zero trust, and deliver new digital services—all while managing tight budgets and compliance requirements.
In this session, we’ll explore how AI-driven networking and security solutions can help local government IT meet these challenges head-on with automated efficiency, high efficacy, better economics, and elevated experiences.
Whether you're advancing smart city initiatives, aiming to replace legacy infrastructure, or tasked with a modernization strategy, the network needs to seamlessly evolve with government to achieve more—simply, securely, and intelligently.

A working session on turning collaboration from a stated value into a daily practice. Building on the keynote, Berké blends storytelling, real-world examples, and behavioral insights to show how small, intentional actions — the language leaders use, the habits teams repeat, the decisions agencies make — shape trust and strengthen collaboration over time. Participants will examine what the Power of We looks like on a regular Tuesday, identify where it's breaking down in their own work, and leave with one concrete action they can take back to their team within a week.

This paper presents a case study demonstrating recent advancements in the Best Value Approach and their impact on improving procurement efficiency, clarity, and performance. Building on lessons learned from earlier implementations, the refined process reduces unnecessary steps, increases transparency, and further emphasizes expert-led decision making. The case study examines the procurement of an advanced mobility technology project using the updated approach and compares actual outcomes to expected results. While the client introduced deviations by not fully adhering to the process, the final procurement outcomes remained consistent with Best Value predictions, indicating the robustness of the methodology. The findings show that the improved process delivered measurable benefits despite partial noncompliance, reinforcing that Best Value principles—when properly structured—can withstand deviations while still producing predictable and successful procurement results.

Public-sector teams are drowning in documents, aging systems, and information that’s hard to find — all while expectations from constituents and leadership keep rising. Every day, we hear big claims about what new technology can do, but what they really need is a clear, realistic plan for improving access to information and easing the workload on their teams.
In this session, DataBank CEO Matt Charlson shares practical steps agencies can take now to clean up decades of unstructured content, reduce duplication, simplify discovery, and prepare for new tools — including where AI can help without adding more noise or risk. You’ll hear real examples of organizations improving service delivery, speeding up routine tasks, and getting more value out of the systems they already have.
Attendees will walk away with grounded guidance and straightforward actions—no hype, no silver bullets, just what’s working today in state and local government.

AI adoption can look smooth on the surface, whether through large, structured rollouts or teams experimenting on their own. But beneath the surface, many organizations face a more fundamental challenge: a lack of shared AI fluency and coordination.
These hidden “icebergs”—fragmented efforts, low AI fluency, and misalignment, are what stall real progress. This session focuses on how to build shared AI understanding across teams so adoption can scale effectively without requiring massive budgets or complex rollouts.
We’ll cover:
+ The hidden “icebergs” that sink many enterprise AI initiatives
+ Why rank-and-file AI fluency matters more than most organizations realize
+ Practical ways to move from fragmented use to coordinated adoption across teams

Government agencies often assume governance will improve once the right policies are written. Tucson’s experience suggests a different reality. As the city advanced its technology and AI governance efforts, the core challenge was not missing documentation but the absence of a shared mental model for how governance should function in daily work. This surfaced a workforce learning need: without common understanding, staff interpreted risk, authority, and escalation inconsistently, even when guidance existed. Tucson addressed this by integrating education directly into the governance build. Cross functional training sessions created space for staff to examine real decision patterns, identify misalignments, and develop shared language across departments. These learning environments revealed where responsibilities were unclear, where risk interpretations diverged, and where existing practices created friction. Insights from this work continue to inform the city’s developing data and technology governance structures and shape how roles, expectations, and decision pathways are defined. Although the work is ongoing, an emerging lesson for public sector training is clear. Governance capability must be taught and reinforced during policy development, not after. Early results show greater alignment in how teams handle ambiguity, coordinate across boundaries, and understand when escalation is required. Tucson’s experience offers a practical model for governments seeking to build governance structures and workforce competence at the same time.

Come see what you've won!

The 2026 WRITA Conference Vendors will be doing their raffle drawings at the demo stage off the exhibit hall. If you entered for any of the vendor prizes, you may be a winner!

CJIS compliance isn’t just an IT issue—it’s a team effort between technology, legal, and law enforcement. With the release of CJIS Security Policy 6.0, agencies face new challenges in managing data protection, access control, and vendor oversight in addition to all the previous requirements. I will discuss how IT teams can take the lead in meeting these updated requirements while coordinating with legal and police departments to ensure policies and practices align. I will discuss several tools we used to implement the needed changes to policy, assist in improved CJI awareness and translating technical safeguards into clear operational and legal processes. Attendees will leave with practical tools and techniques for building CJIS compliance that works in the real world.

This provocative session challenges assumptions and shifts mindsets from siloed thinking to enterprise wide ownership. We will explore how enterprise risk management (ERM) connects cybersecurity to the full spectrum of organizational risks. Help leaders understand how a single event can disrupt internal controls, financial integrity, and mission delivery. Attendees will gain a practical insight using the NIST CSF 2.0 Govern framework to position cyber conversations in business terms, engage cross functional teams, and provide information for leaders to make risk-based decisions.

Most IT challenges in city and county government aren’t caused by a lack of technology they’re caused by the difficulty of operating it day-to-day. With limited staff, growing system demands, and increasing pressure to modernize, many teams find themselves managing complexity rather than gaining efficiency.

This session takes a practical, field-driven approach to modern IT operations. We’ll share how our engineers work alongside public sector IT teams to remove barriers, streamline environments, and create sustainable operational improvements, not just deploy solutions and move on.

We’ll also explore how modern tools, including AI-driven networking platforms like Juniper Mist, are helping teams reduce noise, accelerate troubleshooting, and automate routine tasks.

Being a CIO in government can be a challenge, especially when it comes to business value demonstration, stakeholder engagement, and collaborative efforts with business teams that don’t understand how IT achievements enable public service excellence. This session will help technology leaders understand why they need to be great storytellers and share some real-world examples of how creative storytelling and celebrating your IT success stories increases organizational engagement and improves leadership buy-in and strategic alignment.

State and local agencies rely on EDR, XDR, and SIEM platforms to defend critical systems, yet attackers increasingly bypass these investments by compromising the kernel. Nation state groups and modern ransomware operations now employ EDR killers, kernel tampering, and stealth persistence techniques designed to disable defenses before payload execution. Once the kernel is compromised, every upstream signal becomes unreliable.

This session analyzes how attacks have evolved, including the progression from AuKill-style tooling to current kernel-targeting methods used against public sector environments. It explains why implicit trust in the operating system creates a strategic blind spot and how kernel compromise enables attackers to manipulate memory, suppress alerts, and undermine EDR, XDR, and SIEM decision-making.

The discussion then outlines how continuous runtime integrity verification restores trust in system state, and provides the in-memory detection layer that existing tools assume exists but do not provide.

A real-world case study illustrates the operational impact of costly kernel-level threats in a regulated environment and highlights deployment patterns that align with government constraints, legacy infrastructure, and resource-limited security teams.

Key Takeaways:
> How attackers bypass security before executing payloads, disabling EDR where it cannot see
> How compromised systems can report false data to your entire security stack
> The technical gap between boot-time trust and continuous runtime verification
> Real-world detection strategies for hidden threats in resource-constrained environments

When IT professionals have genuine working relationships, they're more likely to over-communicate, share knowledge across silos, and actually follow through on commitments to each other. This directly impacts project delivery. Project Manager's Tessa and Christine will demonstrate how their friendships with each other and other technical team members created synergy in successfully managing complex multi-departmental projects where vendor coordination and cross-team alignment were critical.

Using emerging technology, the city achieved urban planning innovation utilizing the City of Chandler’s Digital Twin, enabling the city to transform static blueprints into dynamic, data-driven ecosystems. Integrating 3D modeling with real-time data, geospatial analytics, planners were able to visualize and simulate urban environments with unprecedented clarity. Also, project stakeholders and community members directly benefited from digital twin technology enabling them to create, enhance and visualize an alternative future.

This project also introduced an Immersive Experience Lab, powered by augmented reality (AR). The project utilized Augmented Reality technology overlays with digital models blending real-world and concept environments together enabling stakeholders to visualize the future directly at the site of interest. Use of these emerging technology tools fosters a deeper level of engagement and understanding among residents, architects, and city officials.

Both the process and technological innovations described above have empowered Chandler staff and community members to make informed, sustainable decisions, fostering resilience and enhancing the quality of urban life!

Purpose: To equip organizational leaders with the tools and strategies to effectively plan for and execute
a Technology Master Plan given rapidly changing innovative and emerging technology trends.
Abstract: AI is driving a period of rapid technological change, straining IT departments that are already
taxed by ever expanding cybersecurity needs, tightening budgets, and staffing limits. Organizational
collaboration, strategic vision, department buy-in, prioritization and short and long-term budgeting are
more critical than ever.
An agency-wide Technology Master Plan provides more than just strategies, goals, and objectives. When
conducted effectively, Technology Master Plans can be transformative as a method to justify additional IT
resources and develop both an agency-wide technology vision, and actionable roadmap.
In this session, we will break down the comprehensive and collaborative process of developing a
Technology Master Plan, covering:
• Assess the real opportunities in AI, automation, innovative and emerging technologies
• Justify IT and cybersecurity resource needs during a period of significant budget constraints
• Steps to align technology initiatives with agency strategic goals
• Assess the technology and application needs of all departments
• Staffing IT for future successes and challenges
• Budgeting for capital and technology projects and initiatives
• Prioritizing projects for immediate and long-term department and citizen impact
• Establishing governance to ensure the plan remains dynamic as implementation evolves and
priorities change
Participants will leave with actionable insights to navigate challenges like incorporating AI into strategic
planning, gaining buy-in, and overcoming resistance to change, ensuring their organizations are equipped
to thrive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Approx. Presentation Length: 50-60 min.

Every organization’s digital transformation story is unique, but many begin in the same place: the need to better manage documents and streamline processes. In this session, we’ll explore Maricopa County's journey, tracing their evolution from a traditional enterprise document management system (EDMS) to a forward-thinking approach powering smarter, more connected operations. Attendees will hear firsthand how the County modernized workflows, improved access to critical information, and built a strong foundation for innovation. From there, we’ll expand the conversation to the next phase of transformation: integrating artificial intelligence to unlock even greater value. We’ll highlight real-world AI initiatives and discuss how similar technologies can be applied across jurisdictions to reduce manual effort, accelerate decision-making, and enhance service delivery. Whether you’re early in your document management journey or exploring what’s next, this session will provide a practical roadmap for moving from document management to intelligent automation and help you bridge the gap between where you are today and what is possible with AI.

The City of Chandler works to promote proactive citizen engagement through digital services. Focused on using technology for good and elevating the city to be a more inclusive and equitable city to live, work and thrive. Chandler and Chandler Municipal Courts adopted a real-time Instant Language Assistant (ILA) to elevate inclusive resident communication (through multiple languages) and remove language barriers through the city and improve overall customer service.

In October 2025, The Arizona Supreme Court recognized Chandler Municipal Court as a recipient of the Strategic Agenda Award for Advancement in Technology, honoring the court’s innovative Instant Language Assistant program.

In 2025, Chandler’s ERP transformation demonstrated how shifting mindsets—not just systems—can modernize municipal operations. By embracing change, collaborating and innovating across departments, and prioritizing people, the city not only replaced legacy software but redefined how public services are delivered. This mindset-driven approach offers a powerful blueprint for other cities aiming to innovate.
During this time the city has embraced four (4) core elements of a transformative mindset including:
1. Seeing change as opportunity led by city leadership nurturing a culture that welcomes innovation-understanding the shortcomings of legacy systems and embracing new technologies.
2. Inclusive stakeholder engagement by launching “Voice of the Employee” sessions and incorporating input from across departments, Chandler fostered user-centered design, ensuring the ERP meets the real needs of our diverse workforce.
3. Outcome-driven decision making via Chandlers’ ERP strategy assessed current structures, guided governance improvements, and measured transformation success through tangible benefits, not just system deployment.
4. Breaking down silos through communication fostering cross-departmental collaboration became critical in aligning all teams behind a shared vision—and making the ERP rollout a truly enterprise-wide transformation.

This Mindset Transformation initiative also introduced four (4) key strategies to achieve a successful Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) transformation including:
1) Education and training which incorporated comprehensive skill-building, knowledge-sharing, and role profiling equipped staff for new responsibilities and fostered understanding of ERP benefits; 2) Leadership by example city leaders visibly championed the change—communicating the vision, modeling new behaviors, and committing to continuous improvement; 3) Celebrating early wins by marking milestones and achievements helped sustain momentum and built enthusiasm organization-wide; and 4) introducing Continuous feedback loops which encouraged iterative employee input, created room for refinement, strengthened buy-in, and cultivated a lasting culture of improvement.

Abstract:
We are collecting more data than ever—dashboards, performance reports, cross department metrics, and automated insights. Yet many local governments struggle with the “last mile”: transforming analytics into decisions, workflows, and measurable improvements for residents.
We need to share real examples of moving from information to implementation — showing how we can embed data into daily operations, change management routines, budget cycles, and long term planning. Learning practical techniques for making data actionable, including workflow redesign, culture-building, governance structures, low tech automation, and simple accountability mechanisms is our goal.

This discussion cuts through the buzzwords and focus on what works in resource constrained environments. Whether you are just beginning your data journey or already have multiple dashboards in place, you can leave with concrete strategies to ensure data leads to action, not shelfware.

Learning Objectives By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1. Identify common barriers that prevent data insights from driving real change.
2. Apply techniques for embedding data into operational and policy workflows.
3. Design routines and accountability structures that maintain momentum over time.
4. Evaluate progress and measure the real-world impact of data-driven decisions.

Ideal Audience: County administrators, department directors, analysts, elected officials, budget officers, IT managers, performance staff, and anyone responsible for data-informed decision making.