Kentucky Brings On New CIO

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Kentucky has hired Dr. Charles E. Grindle, Colonel, retired, U.S. Army to the role of Chief Information Officer. As CIO, Dr. Grindle will head up the Commonwealth Office of Technology and be a member of Governor Bevin’s executive cabinet.

Dr. Grindle served 29 years in the U.S. Army in various capacities. During his active military service, he was an Army Information Technology and Field Artillery officer. In addition to holding key military positons in Information Technology at the Installation, Agency and Theater level, Dr. Grindle has taught academic courses on Contemporary Security Issues, Cyber Operations, theory of war and strategy, strategy and policy, and United States National security policy.

Dr. Grindle fills a role that has been vacant in Kentucky for the past two years. He will replace acting CIO and Deputy Commissioner Jim Barnhart.

Kentucky’s work on technology improvement has come in fits and starts. The commonwealth is in the midst of a plan to upgrade many state systems to a cloud-based platform and is also working on a broadband expansion plan. The first portion of Kentucky’s expanded broadband network is expected to go live in 2018.

Dr. Grindle will be involved with monitoring broadband progress as well as the transition to cloud. In a statement, Finance and Administration Secretary William M. Landrum III said that he hoped Dr. Grindle’s experience working with large-scale technology systems will help the state break out of its siloed approach to technology deployment.