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EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Featuring:
- Lisa Kent, CIO, City of Houston
- Summer Xiao, Deputy CIO for Enterprise Applications and PMO, City of Houston
Summary: Join Lisa Kent and Summer Xiao as they share their journey of transforming public sector technology in America's fourth-largest city, revealing how they tackle challenges from digital equity to emergency preparedness. Through their candid discussion, they demonstrate how effective leadership, strategic communication, and a mission-driven approach are revolutionizing government technology services while building resilient, high-performing teams.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How the City of Houston breaks down departmental silos to deliver better customer experiences
- The critical role of "one team" meetings in aligning business users, IT teams, and vendors
- Strategies for managing technology transformation during crisis events like COVID-19
- Innovative approaches to solving digital equity challenges in urban environments
- How to build and retain talent in public sector technology roles
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Welcome and introductions
(01:30) Lisa Kent's journey from electrical engineering to city CIO
(05:02) Breaking down silos in large organizations
(09:31) Summer Xiao's background and leadership philosophy
(13:40) HR One project: Leadership lessons and team alignment
(21:54) The "one team" approach to project management
(25:20) Recruiting talent and sharing mission impact
(30:08) Emergency preparedness and continuity planning
(34:13) Collaboration with peer cities and best practices
(37:43) Smart Cities initiatives and digital transformation
(39:10) Digital equity and broadband access challenges
(41:39) Resource management and internship programs
(44:07) Legacy impact and future aspirations
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Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:00:00]:
Today we have Lisa Kent, CIO, the City of Houston and Summer Shao. Deputy CIO for the city of Houston. Lisa and Summer, welcome to the public sector show by tech tables.
Lisa Kent [00:00:44]:
Thank you, Joe, thanks for having us. Yeah.
Summer Xiao [00:00:46]:
Good morning, Joe and Summer.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:00:48]:
Welcome back.
Summer Xiao [00:00:49]:
Yes, it's nice to be back.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:00:51]:
I love it. I love it. Lisa, for those who don't know you, have you been on any podcasts before?
Lisa Kent [00:00:57]:
No, I believe this is the first.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:00:59]:
Let's go. Tech tables. For those who don't know you wouldn't just give a quick background on yourself and the role with City of Houston. Now a quick word from one of our brand partners. Nagaro is a leading provider of digital government services, partnering with state, local and federal clients on some of their most strategic technology projects. Nagaro offers expertise in digital services, legacy modernization, case management, data and AI service desks, cybersecurity and more. Check out Nagaro.com. That's Nagarro.com.
Lisa Kent [00:01:30]:
I started out my professional preparation. I went to the University of Tennessee. So I'm happy to see this bright orange jacket that you're wearing. It's not quite the right shade, but close. Was really rooting for my team to make it to the final four here in my now home city of Houston and FAU knocked us out, but so at the University of Tennessee I got a degree in electrical engineering. I've always been interested in digital. My first job out of college was with Northern Telecom, so I went through as a software engineer working on big central office telephone systems and skip a few years fast forward. Did a little time in California, ended up in Houston, did some work at a couple of our hospitals. Here another shout out for Houston. We have the largest medical center in the world, so it was a tremendous opportunity to be part of that. But then I got called by a recruiter for a job at the Houston Airport system, which is a department of the city of Houston. I spent 20 years in that department progressively working my way up. The last several years were as Chief Technology officer. Has also is a big feather in Houston's cap, one of the only cities to have a five star and a four star airport in the world and tremendous fun to work in a place like that. You get lots of opportunity to be around customers and to see the impact that you're making. When I go back today to the airports, I still enjoy seeing things that we built together. And then so after being there for 20 years, mayor Turner was elected pretty soon after he came into office. I had a lot of exposure as part of our citywide It governance process to the downtown organization, and Mayor Turner promoted me to CIO. So I've been in this role for about seven years.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:03:25]:
Did you fill out a bracket?
Lisa Kent [00:03:26]:
I did not do a bracket, but I have been talking trash with my sons. Both of my sons are from Texas A M. One is just, yeah, I knew there was somebody here, but one of them is about to graduate in about six weeks. And so he's been talking all kinds of trash. And even after both our teams were out of the basketball tournament, he wanted to talk about baseball. And just so you know, Tennessee ran that series, knocked him out three to nothing.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:03:54]:
So all three games, I had Houston, and I made sure I sent an email out because I was like, Hold me accountable. And Houston just busted my just I know, it was heartbreaking. I thought this was the year I was caught up in the hype. And we talked about Houston. Remember, we talked about it beginning of the season. This was like they were ranked number one and number two. And I mean, they had played maybe five games, and I thought the run was going to be so deep. I was like, oh, come on, this is going to be great. And then, as Tim Roemer said, my bracket got busted, but don't have your cybersecurity strategy. Get so, which we'll talk about a little bit later. Lisa, an important topic that I feel like we really connected on was customer experience. And you hinted to it just being in the city and seeing the impact. I think it's really easy for large organizations, whether you're a city, a county, Fortune 500 company, to be siloed off from each other. Why do you think that is? And how do you think leadership fixes that problem in order to provide customers with the best possible end user experience?
Lisa Kent [00:05:02]:
Well, I think the reason why it happens is it's just human nature to get stuck in whatever your part of a business process is and to lose sight of what that end to end experience really is. I think what leaders do to help with that is to set goals about that total user experience. So it might be measuring things that measures how fast or convenient something is, but the whole organization has to be focused on that end to end experience, not just your piece of it. We see that a lot in our roles here with the city of Houston. We support 23 different lines of business. And oftentimes what the resident or the visitor in Houston experiences is the result of multiple business processes either within or across very different departments. And so when you only care about your own piece of the pie, you don't see what that end user is experiencing, and you can excel at a piece of it, but if the rest of the pieces aren't flowing together, information being shared, that customer experience is still not so great. So we focus as leaders on setting that monitoring and measurement of what that whole experience actually is.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:06:21]:
That's fantastic. Summer, I know a lot of folks in here also know you, but if you just give us a quick background on yourself.
Lisa Kent [00:06:28]:
All right.
Summer Xiao [00:06:28]:
Good morning, everyone. My name is Summer Shao. I am the deputy CIO over enterprise applications in the project management office at the city Houston. So I'm super lucky to be part of Director Kent's team. And so the Enterprise Applications group is I'd like to call responsible for the one ones, the 911, and the three one ones. And of course, the PMO group is responsible for ensuring our projects go off on schedule, on budget, and with good quality. Our vendors here know that a little bit about me. I moved here when I was ten into a little town called Sugarland, Texas, and I never left. So I think I'm as much of a native Houstonian as anybody can be. Yeah. And every once in a while, people joke. They're like, why do you have a little bit of Texas accent? I was like, well, because I grew up in Sugarland, Texas. What do you expect? Yeah, so that's a little bit about me.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:07:27]:
Yeah. No, I love that. Okay, so you said the 911, you're just, like, always putting out fires.
Summer Xiao [00:07:33]:
I'm not putting out fires. I think our team makes sure that the fire trucks get to the place so they can put out fires. That's right. I like to say we build a foundation for these things.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:07:46]:
No, I love that. So on the theme of customer experience and fire trucks, there's a great book. So I don't know how many in the audience have read this book. It's called The Phoenix Project, a novel about it DevOps and helping your business win. Anyone from the audience ever heard of this book? Read the book. What? I and I actually had a CIO, a friend, give this book to me. It was really I'm about if I was honest, I'm halfway someone called me out. They're like, you read the preface, right? I was like, I'm halfway through the book. Don't worry. So I'm gonna read the summary just so everyone's on the same page. So Bill is an It manager at Parts Unlimited and has been tasked with taking on a project critical to the future of the business codename Phoenix Project. But the project is massively over budget and behind schedule. The CEO demands Bill must fix the mess in 90 days, or else Bill's entire department will be outsourced. The vendors are like, yes. With the help of a prospective board member and a mysterious philosophy of the three ways, bill starts to see that It work has more in common with manufacturing plant than he ever imagined. By the way, there's a fantastic book. I did read the whole book called The Goal. Anyone else read the goal? Yeah. With the clock ticking, bill must organize workflows, streamline interdepartmental communications, and effectively serve the other business functions at Parts Unlimited in a fast paced, entertaining style. Three illuminaries of the DevOps movement deliver a story that anyone who works in It will recognize. Listeners will not only learn how to improve their own It organizations, they will never view it the same. So Summer, for a customer experience to be truly successful, leaders have to have empathy from the bottom to the top. How are you trying to influence the culture in the city of Houston above and beyond managing its processes?
Summer Xiao [00:09:31]:
So, first of all, I listened to the first 20 minutes of that book on the drive here, and I have to say, hidden a little too close to home. I was just talking to Director Tim. I was like, I don't know if you really want to be listening to a story that you live every day. You're like, I don't know. I already lived that life. I think when it comes to customer experience, first and foremost from the leadership level, like, Director Kent is a catalyst to change to many of these conversations, right? And I get the view of people from all the way from the front lines to the leadership level, right? And I think of these influences as two folds, one fold. I call it the carrot and the stick approach, right? You have to have both, right? So the carrot approach is really saying, we have an opportunity. That's why we work in public sector to make a real difference. And in order to make a real difference, we have to work together, right? Some of these problems have to be solved by working together, right? It's not your problem, my problem, or their problem. It's our problem. I often use the analogy our FriendLine workers are like the Uber drivers, right? The technology department is like, Uber, right? And then the back office, it's like the restaurant, right? You can yell at the driver all day long and the technologist all day long. But if the restaurants mess up your order, the restaurants mess up your order, the end customer doesn't get the experience they want. So everybody has to understand that and work together. So that's the carrot part, right? Like, we're all here to make an impact. That's why we work in public sector. The stick part is, honestly, you can't wish the problem away. And I remember having a conversation with Director Ken. I'm like she's like, yeah, at the end of the day, this constituent is not going to get what they need if we don't work together. And I said, yeah, and somebody's always going to come to public session to complain about that problem if we don't work together. You cannot wish the problem away, right? So you have to confront the problem and work together. So that's the way I think of these situations.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:11:43]:
So I'm not like public sector like you, but I coach high school basketball. I talk a lot on the podcast. But you can actually email Jtosty something at Santa Barbara Unifiedschooldistrict.com. They make the email right? And it's like incredibly long. I'm like, no one will ever remember this. So parents will email, I emailed you. I'm like, I don't ever check that email, but I have one because you get all of the school emails. But it's working with the administrators, with the sheriffs, working with the team. There's a whole operation that goes into this. And there is some type of a carrot in a stick approach. Mainly the stick comes with the parents who complain about playing time. That just naturally happens and you try to be gentle, but after cross rivalry games, emotions are running high, not for the coach, but for the parents. The coach, I just stand there and take it and the parents just go but I think it's super important to be able to work together because if that doesn't happen, it all breaks down. I love offline. We were joking about how I think, Summer, you were telling the story around was it like your family member and they were taking a boat out here to the Americas? Well, if you're not clear on your communication, you might end up in South.
Summer Xiao [00:12:57]:
America, you might end up in the United States. It actually happened.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:13:00]:
Yeah. So you end up in Peru, I think is what happened. And a lot of times just having that communication solves probably 99% of the problems, which I think is really great. Lisa, you learn a lot from the different business units that operate across the city. Just like your visibility alone is probably incredible. Can you just talk about the balance you have between learning from the businesses, that natural resistance that the businesses might have? Maybe it's to change, maybe it's to just like new technology or new processes or new people. How do you address that? I call it like a hey, friend manner of gently, like, hey friend, this is the direction we need to go.
Lisa Kent [00:13:40]:
Yeah. So that is a challenge. I would say in technology we are as much technologists as in some cases business consultants, and in some cases maybe even psychologists, therapists. Yes. We frequently encounter that solving problems like what Summer was talking about, take that collaboration across multiple business processes and some of what we do is just illuminating the situational awareness so that those business partners begin to see something that they never understood. I think it's human nature sometimes we jump to conclusions and say what we think the root cause is. So a good example would be people say we need a new system, but automating a bad process is just another bad system. Right. So sometimes what we do is help them hey, friend. Show them some data, encourage them maybe to talk with the end customer. We did this recently with one of our three one one projects where we pushed a little bit hard that we needed to see some interaction with a public focus group and to take input directly from the people who are using the application and that does help broaden perspective. So that's part of what we do. There are lots of times where the hey, friend nudge might be, where there are problems between departments and they haven't taken a look at what that handoff looks like and how maybe we can perfect the business process before we go and automate and implement a new thing. Right. So there is some art to it that people need to feel valued and respected. They need to feel like it is not trying to cram something down their throats. But most of the business partners we work with, they genuinely care about the customer experience and when they begin to understand where some of the gaps are, they join us and become partners in solving it.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:15:47]:
Yeah. No, I love that you want to build those partnerships, those relationships or those bridges. Right. That's how stuff gets done. Summer, you went to the University of Houston. That's right. I almost was going to force you.
Summer Xiao [00:16:01]:
To wear I thought about it and then they lost and I just feel just it just hurts a little.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:16:08]:
So, yeah, we were going to go jamie and I were going to go to the store and I was like, should we force Summer to wear this? She's like, they lost. I'm like, I know, but should we force her to wear the jersey? She's like, don't do it. Yeah. That was sad. So on tech tables, we often discuss how winning teams communicate. I talk about this a lot and I know it's tough. Like if you're not in sports, you're totally lost right now. You're like, this is so boring. But hang with me. So if you ever go to a professional sports, whether it's like football or whatever, if you pay attention to how the teams communicate, all of the best teams are talking to each other and most visibly, like, I'm a Golden State Warriors fan. Draymond. Green gets a little crazy. He talks a little too much for me, but he's still talking. Right. And even when they zoom in on Steph Curry, he's talking. Right. So you'll see a lot of times these teams are communicating and we are on the kids in the program all the time to communicate because 15 and 16 year old boys don't want to communicate. They do not talk. But when you give to varsity. Everyone talks. And there's a huge gap between JV and varsity. And varsity is willing. They're not only willing to communicate, if they don't, they're going to lose by 70 and get dunked on. And then nobody wants to get dunked on when they're in high school. So there's a big jump. And the jump of communicating is like, there's a part of communication. Like, you need to have that trust. And so I love van rides. And van rides are actually how this happened. This is how this happened. Like, I was having lunch with a CIO at the time who's now the deputy city manager in San Jose, Rob Lloyd. And this is like, 2021. And it was, like, pretty funny where I was like, no, I got these van rides. We do this with kids and something happens. Like, with the losing team, it's the same players. And then they started winning. And I thought it was like, the most fascinating thing where you took the same group of kids, you lose every game, getting blown out by 35, 40, and then you end up winning. And I thought it was just, like, fascinating. So I'm like, Rob, I'm just bitballing all these dynamics. And then what I'm thinking about, and he's like, Joe, you should bring the community together. And I was, like, in a van. Do you think people will go in a van? He's like, no one getting in a van with you. This is like during COVID Basically during COVID too. He's like, I wouldn't wear three masks and get in a van. But this is just a process. And this is how communicating, this is how this event how these events started happening. But just random tangent for those. But on LinkedIn recently, I saw Summer, she was talking about how impactful the HR project, HR One just launched. Could you maybe just talk about the leadership and communication lessons that you learned from that project?
Summer Xiao [00:18:52]:
So that Project Director Kent was the symbol of great leadership. We often talked about it, and I would say we survived it with success.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:19:03]:
You're here today.
Summer Xiao [00:19:04]:
Yes, we're here today. We made it. I think on leadership. What I learned in that process is talking about coaching basketball, right? You're coaching on the field and you're on the sidelines, but you have to do the coaching in the locker room. You have to do the coaching in the van. I mean, not going to get in the van with you, but yes, the kids will. But that leadership is a contact sport. Like, you have to roll up your sleeves in these moments when the stakes are real high and work with your team and be there. And Director Kent was there. Every status meeting, everything we needed. And I learned from her to be there with my team. At one point, we had one meeting. Monday, we had a government's meeting. Tuesday, we had a pre status meeting. Wednesday, we had a status meeting, a steercoat meeting. Every day of the week we had a meeting, and that's what it took to get something that transformational done. So I learned that leadership, it's a contact sport. You have to be hands on at some moments to get these great efforts through. And on communication. The first lesson we learned, and this came from our HR director, we have to be aligned. We cannot have any infighting. We just have to be aligned, be unified in front of our vendors. But then the second lesson I learned is that we can't even be fighting with our vendors. I remember vividly, we brought a group of new vendors on. And so essentially, we had the HR team, we had the It team, we had the vendor team, and all three team would staff with top tier people, like the best business users, technical people, vendors. And I noticed people started fighting with each other, and I'm like, we finally got all the right people in the room. We can't be fighting with each other. So we had to have what we call one team meeting. It was like Director Kint said, sometimes we have to be therapists, right? I literally got everybody in the room. I said, we're going to talk about what happened before, what is our beef with each other, very briefly. Then we're going to talk about what can we do better, and then we're going to talk about how we can go forward together. And that meeting is instrumental now, I think I've just had to have a second one team meeting with another project. Now I've just trademarked, I've dubbed the term. Now you guys can't use it. And then the one team meeting, always some of the takebacks is we have to be transparent with each other, right? If somebody's not doing their part, regardless whether it's from the business or from it, or from the vendor, we have to stand up and say, we have to normalize feedback. Nobody's perfect, and that's okay, it's safe. And third of all, we can't surprise each other. So those are some pretty important communication takeaways that I learned from the HR one project. Yeah.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:21:54]:
No, I love that. I love the leadership as a contact sport, even during the van, I've had to pull the van over one time because the kids in the back were grumbling about playing time. And so I made a very even for the best players, I benched all the five of them, and when they had the humility to be like, okay, hey, I'm coach, I'm sorry. That's when the team starts to come together. And it was like, there's a couple of times where, especially when you're the head JB coach, you lose all of your players from the best players, go to varsity next year, you lose everybody, you get a new cycle. And so every year it's like you're doing the same thing. And then actually, every year it does get a little bit easier because the varsity players have your back or like younger kids get in line. But there is that leadership as a contact sport, which I love. And in the locker room. I love that we're in the locker room and the first thing that we're always telling the kids is, number one is have fun. If you're not having fun at your job, you're going to have a really long life. That might hurt some of you, but it can be a really long life. You better have some fun. So having fun is, I think more teams should have more fun with each other and that really bonds the teams together a lot. And sometimes it doesn't have to be a hotel zaza right. It could be food, it could be at your local pizza shop or you name it. Before we get to the audience, Q and A, are there any kind of critical vacancies that you would love to market to this group of fine folks here or possibly recruit from other agencies that you would love?
Lisa Kent [00:23:23]:
We have no shame in stealing from other agencies. Yeah, we would gladly have the opportunity to look at anybody that you could send our way. But no, we have a lot of vacancies. I think everybody in public sector is struggling with the same thing. We are competing for resources that have options in other business sectors and we need to align people who care about the mission. That's one of the things that I will say that our organization is really working on, doing a better job. And I was just visiting with Shauna earlier about this, of doing a better job, of telling the story of the mission, why things matter. Those are the things that get people excited about coming to work and maybe not having the same perks or salary as they might get in the private sector. But what we are going to be doing later this summer is publishing an accomplishments report that begins to tell some of that story about the impact that we are making on actual people's lives, the projects that we do and why they matter. We have a number of vacancies that we are recruiting for, several in Summers area, which I will defer to her to talk about, but we have some in Dr. Mitchell's area. Dr. Mitchell is our chief Information Security Officer and he'll be up here later today. He is actively recruiting in cyber. Burt Wharford is here. He's deputy CIO for Enterprise Infrastructure Services. And we have a lot of positions, architect level jobs. So when we're looking on both the compute side as well as network side, we are looking for architect level people. I believe we've just made some decisions from Project Management office, but one more that you're recruiting for. Yeah, talk a little bit about that. Yeah.
Summer Xiao [00:25:20]:
So on the topic of Human Capital Management systems and ERP systems, we always have critical vacancies on that side. So, ERP, experience the PMO. We also have still a few more PM openings. Also senior net developers. I think we have a few more openings there too.
Lisa Kent [00:25:39]:
You have an assistant director over the I do.
Summer Xiao [00:25:43]:
I do have assistant director over the PMO position open at this time. And another shameless plug. The city of Houston is nominated for two Smart Cities Award IDC Smart Cities Award voting ends end of this week, so please go vote on that and that's it. That's all my shameless plug for the day.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:26:02]:
I love that. I love that. All right, and we're going to open up the audience. Q A, someone has a question. There we go. All right. There we go.
Lisa Kent [00:26:10]:
Meg Hare Accenture so, Samara, I loved that you talked about your one team meeting. Do you guys have a formal process for taking lessons learned and best practices? Like, you might learn from some of these challenging projects and then incorporating them into your next project? Like, how do you guys do post mortems? How do you do best practices, lessons learned and make sure that you don't repeat some of the same mistakes, not that you're making mistakes, but that you don't fall into some of those same.
Summer Xiao [00:26:38]:
Traps as you do before.
Lisa Kent [00:26:39]:
So what is your process on that?
Summer Xiao [00:26:41]:
So this is where I'll be transparent and say we have a process before every project close out, there's a lessons learned document that needs to be drafted by the PM now to be completely transparent. Are we on top of having those meetings afterwards? No. Are we going to start doing more of those? Absolutely. But we do have PMO town halls where we'll share our lessons learned and a lot of it is informal, but can we do better? Absolutely. Yeah. This is one of those situations where we do have a formal process, but can we do better implementing it? Absolutely.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:27:14]:
Any other questions for there we go. Chris Newport Accenture could you all talk about every public agency deals with this issue in differing levels of intensity, but could you talk about tactics or strategies that you've tried that you're interested to try that deal with? You're underresourced. You just talked about the number of vacancies that you have. There's always an urgent issue that is also very important to address how you confront the requirement to deal with those while creating capacity to address the longer running, crucially important capability issues while keeping the fray kind of addressed.
Lisa Kent [00:28:02]:
So that was a really long question, but I'm going to take a stab at it. Number one, we absolutely are underresourced, right? And candidly, in public service that may always be a problem, but we do, where necessary, leverage contracts to flex, so we sometimes outsource certain functions. It is not ideal to outsource a majority of what we're responsible for, but there are certain functions that we can stretch and flex as needed. Project management is a good. Example where we have absolutely used that. We've also done that on our ERP team where we've had to for certain operational functions. Another thing that we do to work on that. In fact, Summers team is building a better demand management process so that we can again with data illustrate to my boss, Mayor Turner and to those who are authorizing our budget, which is Mayor Turner and city council to illustrate. Here's what the demand is, and here's what we hear from you are your strategic priorities and help us put the resources towards the things that matter most to you in general. I have not had Mayor Turner turn us down when we did that alignment with him and his priorities. Where we do struggle though, is finding those right resources.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:29:29]:
Just really curious on your continuity of operations, planning and training as a major city with a lot of critical infrastructure, not just for state of Texas, for the city of Houston, also for the nation. I've been involved in some incident responses to small municipalities who are underresourced and don't have the talent to respond. I know city Houston is not in that category, but can you talk about how you look at the continuity of operations in all your business functions that you support, how you plan for an incident, and how you partner? With all the other resources that may be available, not just within the city of Houston, but with your industry partners, private sector, and the state and federal partners.
Lisa Kent [00:30:08]:
Sure. So in general, for the coupe process, we do update our continent operations plan every year. In fact, the gentleman standing right next to you, Burt Corford, is one of the team members. He represents our infrastructure side of the house. We also have our public safety communications, folks from our networking team, and folks that support the Houston Emergency Center. These are all It personnel that spearhead our review process that we go through every year to update that coupe process. We do also periodically do things like tabletop exercises. Every May, right before hurricane season starts. We remind our entire organization of what our responsibilities are for different types of emergencies. But then the city has also done some unique partnerships. In fact, Dr. Mitchell may talk about this later, particularly if you ask the question again.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:31:07]:
He told me to go easy on him.
Lisa Kent [00:31:09]:
Yeah, but he was part of a process that we went through from a cyber readiness exercise that we structured. And the scenario was where it was simultaneous natural disaster and cyber event, which is a very realistic, real life example of things as they actually happen. And that did include not only multiple government agencies, but a lot of the private sector as well. We had telecommunications vendors, energy vendors, and people participate in that process. And so we simulated what would we do and how would it affect not just city services, but actual corporations that operate in this region. And what would we do to partner together to affect a better outcome? And so I know that Dr. Mitchell is continuing to do more of that. He also works closely with not only our federal agencies, but the city's Department of Homeland Security and our emergency operations folks. So those are a couple of examples of how we do it.
Summer Xiao [00:32:16]:
And I do have a shout out for the leadership here. Director Kent, dr. Mitchell and Bert. I think one thing about business continuity that we all live through, and I'm really grateful for all of their foresight is COVID. We don't think of that as an incident, because it was forever. I mean, I feel like we just got to the end of it. But because of the leadership's foresight to push a lot of the technology to the cloud right, to adopt Esignature, to adopt various online technology, go mobile right. Equip the workforce with laptops, the team was really quick to respond to that situation. And that is also, I think, what we do as technologists. We got to look ahead for business continuity, for all kinds of situations. But we got so much adoption on teleconferencing and Esignature software that it was just now we've just been elevated to the next level through this experience. But if there wasn't this foresight to push it, we would have been in a reactive situation instead of a proactive situation.
Lisa Kent [00:33:21]:
Yeah, I think that's a really great point. From the technology side, we did a really good job of building that foundation. What was an interesting challenge that we now know we need to do a better job of is the user adoption. So we were ready to take all these things live. In fact, had already been using them, but the general employee population wasn't ready to use those tools. And so we spent some time ramping up in that early stages of COVID teaching the users what they already had in their toolbox and how to make use of that now. So that's something that we're actively working on, doing more evangelizing and ensuring that they're using these tool sets to the fullest possibility.
Summer Xiao [00:34:08]:
Good morning. Kendra Allen with Deloitte Houston.
Lisa Kent [00:34:11]:
I think if I got my stats.
Summer Xiao [00:34:13]:
Right, is the fourth largest city in the US. Right? Who do you consider to be your peers? And speaking of the people, topic and connections, are those peer cities places that you go for best practices and lessons learned? Do you look to the state for some of that sort of where do you find your connections?
Lisa Kent [00:34:33]:
Well, we definitely do socialize with the big cities. In fact, just in the last month or so, one of my counterparts in San Antonio, Craig Hopkins, is setting up a big city CIO forum that I will be a part of, and we do that in other forms, too. So we definitely consider the top ten cities in the US. Would be who are our both competitors as well as partners to share best practices and expertise. I'm also part of a local CIO forum that is not just public service, and so we learn a lot from private sector as well. And those are some of the avenues that we take. We have even in both applications and infrastructure. Dr. Mitchell, on the cyber side, is part of a similar group. There have been lots of times where we share how we have done something. Chicago was a good example. They're our next competitor, number three and number four, and we hope to soon surpass them. But there's lots of sharing back and forth between those. I think New York City we have shared information with too, particularly the one that I remember was about digital equity, so broadband access for underserved communities where New York had been on the leading edge of doing some things in that space.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:35:52]:
So that was a fantastic question and I love how you dropped that because it was in basketball terms, it's like an Ollie Oop and I'm going to dunk this home. So she's like, I don't know what you mean. What I mean by that is Jamie Tosty and I have been talking with Craig Hopkins and we are going to go to San Antonio this year. So he is very excited. A little birdie told me that Lisa's never met Craig in the state of Texas. Is that right?
Lisa Kent [00:36:18]:
That's right. I've met him lots of times out of the state of Texas.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:36:22]:
We're going to break that. So later this year, deep later this year. We're working on the date with Craig right now, but there's like a Tamale festival and all kinds of stuff. We're working, so and Craig says he's going to bring out everyone from San Antonio. And we know some of the folks at the University of Texas, San Antonio, actually, shameless plug again, I'm going to be speaking on Sunday at a higher ed conference with Dr. Vanessa Keenan, who, for those of you know yeah, she's like I'm like her little travel budy, which is great. So the two of us go into these cities and I just interview her on a stage, which is pretty so. But we're going to go to San Antonio later this year. We don't normally do two of these, but Craig was one of the first three who's been on the podcast in the public sector, so he came on very early on. Absolutely fantastic. If you ever email with Craig, and I won't give you his email, but if you ever email Craig, you'll see in his signature line, he's all about one team, one mission, character matters, leadership matters. Former Navy, and I just recently interviewed Patsy Boozer. Who's? The CISO there. She's also former Navy and just really great. They really wanted to come here. They have a giant cyber conference in Washington, DC. That they were on it, so they were unable to make it here. But maybe if I'm a little persistent. I can have you go to Antonio. Yeah. So, awesome couple. You have a question? Thanks, Kapil. Nakbal Nagaru, what are a couple of upcoming initiatives you're excited about?
Lisa Kent [00:37:43]:
Well, we have a lot of exciting initiatives. We're continuing to replace a lot of legacy systems and move things to the cloud. Summer's team alone has been doing a tremendous amount. In fact, I'll let you share a couple of those if you would like to.
Summer Xiao [00:37:59]:
Yeah, we have ERP transformation projects that is ongoing. It's really an interesting juncture at this point. We have Lexi applications. We're moving on to SaaS, right. We have some critical public safety projects that Lisa has been working really hard to secure funding on to move forward. Another shameless plug, I guess. That's them. We just went live with the City of Houston open finance website. Great support from the leadership team here. And we were featured as the Smart Cities 50 for that third award. Yeah, our third award in the Smart Cities Conference this year. Well, we haven't won the other two.
Lisa Kent [00:38:36]:
Yet, but we're going to all of you are going to vote, right? So help us bring it.
Summer Xiao [00:38:41]:
And so I didn't elaborate. So on the IDC Smart Cities Award, it's the Ethan project. Which is telemedicine inside of ambulances. That's really some of the top tier city projects that we're doing. I'm not sure if any other city is actually doing at the level we are Rubicon, which we've outfitted our trucks, trash trucks, to be smart trucks. So those are two projects. IDC Smart Cities award. Go vote for the city. So those are some of the upcoming projects and the projects we've already racked up.
Lisa Kent [00:39:10]:
And I think one other. That my counterpart from Harris County, Cindu Menon, is here. One thing that both her organization and ours have been working on together is that digital equity, broadband access. And so everyone here is probably aware there are some tremendous opportunities with once in a generation federal funding coming down to all states to be able to bridge that gap. And one of the things that when you see a city like Houston, you think that everyone here is served. In fact, if you look at the FC first generation map, it would show that 100% coverage is here. But as that map is getting refined, you're beginning to see the real story, which is that there are certainly pockets and neighborhoods within a large urban area like this that simply do not have access to acceptable internet bandwidth. To the point that even the mayor of the fourth largest city in America, in his own home, when my team went to his house and measured the bandwidth that he was getting, it was not even classified as served. Okay, so that should tell you something about the magnitude of the problem. So Harris County and the City of Houston are partnering together in order to do solicitations to get opportunities to solve that problem. Beyond the way that we have been solving it historically. And so we're really excited about that. The federal government will be announcing through the states some of those federal dollars that will be awarded later this summer. And so we're really pumped about focusing on Houston's, what we call ten complete communities. And so those are defined neighborhoods. You can read about them on our website, but those are areas that we intend to lift up all Houstonians and give them access to these services that help them with their education, help them with their professional development, and help them participate in life, which is now a requirement to be able to do that digitally. So those are some things that those are big, hairy, hard to solve problems, but you feel a great sense of accomplishment when you get it done. So hopefully, in a couple of years, three years, you'll begin to see some real fruit born from those activities.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:41:39]:
Eric Carter, Quest Software so you mentioned that there's a lack of resources within the city, and I'm just wondering, how do you handle that lack of resources? Because I'm seeing it with other customers as well. When you think about managing your Active Directory environments and cybersecurity and ransomware, how do you manage that lack of resource within the organization there?
Lisa Kent [00:42:04]:
Well, there's not an easy answer. I mean, one answer is where we have critical vacancies, if possible, we temporarily outsource it in order to get that gap met. We also have secret weapons. You're looking at three of them right here, right? Dr. Mitchell. Summer shao. Burt Corford. They come up with ways to motivate their own staff to take on more, and those are things that we do have to watch. We're concerned about burnout of the existing employees. There's only so much the existing team can do. But they do a phenomenal job of identifying where is that sweet spot that we can inspire and motivate our teams to do more, versus where do we really need to flex and get others. The other thing that we're doing, we've started brand new this year. This summer will be the first of our new internship program. And so this is something that we are going a little bit different route than how we had approached it before. And we're looking to partner with the universities in this region and to build a pipeline of new talent that we would draw into our organization. And so we are definitely interested in any of your ideas. If any of you are from other cities or other organizations, and you've done that before, we would like to learn from your experiences. But that is one thing that we have to begin to do, like the private sector does, of drawing those college graduates into an organization like ours and get them inspired and pumped up about serving the public.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:43:41]:
We'll take one more. Mr. Craig Parker with Loblali Consulting. So you've mentioned a lot of projects right that you've working on currently. Lisa and Summer, you've both been served in public sector for a really long time. I'm curious, with the future or even in the past projects, when you go to retire one day, what would you love to hang your hat on? What would you be most proud of? Whether it's a future project that you have your sight on or one that.
Summer Xiao [00:44:07]:
You'Ve already done before, retirement is really far away for me. I hope it doesn't take that long. I think regardless of retirement or eventually moving on to a different position, because it's not about the project that I think I will remember. It's about the people that I've worked with and their focus on the mission, the team. Dr. Mitchell, first time he met me, he's like, I get you. You're about the mission. I was like, I am about the mission. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's about the people I've met and the difference we made every day working with these challenges. That's what I'll hang my hat on and be proud of.
Lisa Kent [00:44:46]:
Yeah, I agree. I mean, we are blessed to have a tremendous team in general, but particularly the executive leadership team, all incredibly accomplished individuals, each of them in their own space and way, not only technically, but from a leadership perspective. I certainly first of all, I do not intend to retire. For any of you who are wondering, we do have an election coming, but I would love to continue serving the city of Houston and to be part of this incredible team that we've built together. I do derive some significant satisfaction from solving problems. That's the reason why I'm still here. And just like I said with the airport, when I go back to the airports in Houston and I can remember being part of building a certain thing, whether it was a building or a product or services, but it's the same in our city central It organization, where I derive satisfaction from recognizing that we made something better. So either the service was improved or the citizen is able to more easily discern what to do to get their problem solved. Those are things that you walk away and you feel good about, that you did a good thing.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:46:09]:
Well, that's going to conclude this first episode. And as we wrap up off the podcast, you'll have the honor of signing the basketball. Actually, I technically have to sign two basketballs. So how it's going to work is I know you're like, I have to sign a basketball. This basketball came from Orlando. Okay. People wanted to jump me and Jamie flying back because they thought the Amway Center, like, this was signed by college athletes. And I was like, no. CIOs are like, are they important? So this time, we hid this ball in a bag, and I carried the blank one, and they were like, this guy's going to the final Four. I was like, no, final four of the podcast. So we'll have you sign the ball and then Tim's holding that one, we're going to have you sign that ball also. And then at the end of today, since you're the host, you're going to have a signed ball that you're going to take with you.
Lisa Kent [00:46:58]:
Yay. I will display it proudly in our office area. Thank you.
