Jayson Dunn, CIO for the City of Cincinnati

WHAT WE DO:

“The City’s Enterprise Technology Solutions Division is County Levy funded, but City managed, so it’s a unique balancing act in terms of recognizing boundaries and limitations. The beauty of it is that most of those things are code, ordinance and charter driven. The key is to know the structures that you have to operate within, and aligning your strategies to work within those structures. Sometimes they come across as limitations, but they are just the boundaries and constructs and every business has them. We are still able to strategize and innovate.”

What’s the state of business technology in greater Cincinnati region? How do we compare to other cities nationally or globally?

“Cincinnati is nurturing a very innovative and forward thinking technology ecosystem. It’s nice to see because it is going to help us retain our talent and grow to become a hotbed of technology and innovation. The more talent we have in our region and the more partners are working together in incubators like Cintrifuse, helps bring leadership together in the technology space. It’s important for the big companies here to consider the opportunities available to that tech talent. Historically, we have a lot of strong companies here in our region; insurance, manufacturing, hospitals and university systems; and now that the technology, data and applications are hitting these industries, they see value in how data can create efficiencies. What’s more, small startups can get exposure to these very large organizations. We can now see how a tiny company with a very targeted line of business, or service or application, might totally transform how things are done in the larger scheme of things. Being able to connect those startups and the talent to some of the business decisions we are making in a less traditional way is really helpful. The City’s Small Business Enterprise (SBE) program and the minority and women in business programs are a big part of that, because they lead to opportunities. It has been one of the Mayor’s initiatives to create opportunities for people to compete for some of the work that we are doing, and at the same time, to provide them exposure to how to do business with the government or with a large Fortune 500 company. This might not otherwise be possible for a very small startup, but not because their skill and expertise is not valuable. Instead of losing them to the coast, we need to create opportunities for them to do some things here.”