Colorado CIOs Highlight Potential Benefits of Teamwork, Collaboration

Collaboration and teamwork were a consistent theme at the Colorado Digital Government Summit with city and county officials providing uses cases that emphasized partnerships crucial to maximizing value from shared services, while standing up new solutions and embarking on new development techniques. The consolidated city-county of Denver migrated to shared services about 12 years ago, a journey that's nearly complete, said Scott Cardenas, Denver CIO, following his opening remarks to more than 200 at the event on Wednesday, Oct. 25. Having previously collaborated on apps like Ballot TRACE, their award-winning ballot tracking solution, Denver's IT and elections officials were primed to work together again during the 2016 election cycle.Together, they were able to establish a temporary election security operations center with real-time dynamics and audio and visual connections to watch for bad actors. The agency saw activity, but didn't experience a significant incident or breach during the election, according to Cardenas, a result that proved the project's worth and attracted nationwide notice. Denver is currently a finalist for project of the year at the Colorado Technology Association's 17th annual Apex Awards on Nov. 8 as a result of its elections collaboration.