I took my first computer class as a junior in high school. I worked as a computer operator at CH2M HILL while getting my Computer Science degree from Oregon State University, and stayed with the same company for the next 13 years.

I spent 11 years at MGM MIRAGE, where I started out in systems engineering. By the time I left, I was the Chief Technology Officer and VP of Technology for City Center, a $7 billion multi-use urban development that the company is building.

I grew up in Henderson, Nevada and wanted to give back to the community. We're one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, and provide many of the same services as most cities. The county has seen a good deal of change in IT leadership over the past five years, and I saw the opportunity to contribute both consistent leadership and world-class experience with the business of IT.

The decision-making process is more horizontal than in the private sector—there's a lot of consensus-building and getting buy-in instead of just stating your strategy to the CEO and getting the OK to move forward. Second, the technology organization is federated. There are more IT groups than the people reporting to me, which requires strong collaboration and creates unique integration challenges. Third, funding is more restricted—it doesn't matter how good a business case we can make if the money's just not there. Finally, staff retention is a constant issue. People move between agencies, more people are retiring, and we have to compete with the private sector, where compensation levels are often higher.

I've only been in my role since December 2006, so my main focus so far has been on building bridges and tearing down walls. We're working on processes more than anything else, using the ITIL model to optimize the business of IT and better support the delivery of services. We've already made a lot of progress.

The biggest challenge for me has been in determining our appetite for risk versus value, and how it affects timing on new technology spending. Every organization is unique in terms of how much it wants to spend and when they want to spend it for the return gained, and this is something I'm still trying to figure out for Clark County.

Staff input is important, as they're the ones closest to the environment. I also rely on internal and external peer groups, as well as research from firms like Gartner. The state of Nevada has strong collaboration among government agencies—we meet quarterly and share information between those meetings. In addition, I look at what other government agencies are doing and reach out to local and state CIOs working on efforts similar to our own.

I believe many people in college view IT as a sweatshop career or think that all IT will be outsourced offshore, which could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if more young people in our country don't enter the computer science field. The opportunities in IT and where they lie aren't well-understood, so we need to articulate that to the next generation.

So far, it's been very positive. Microsoft has so many products and offerings that it can be a challenge understanding where they all fit, and our Microsoft account team has been very helpful in that regard. One area where we're working to take better advantage of our Microsoft relationship is on the premier support side, where we're trying to make better use of the resources that our support agreement makes available to us.

Learn the perspective of the customers and how to speak their language. It is only through understanding the customers that technologists can bring value to the table.