Summit Dinner

Registration and Breakfast

Welcome and Introductions

Rob Lloyd, Executive Director, Center for Digital Government

Teri Takai, Chief Programs Officer, Center of Digital Government

Keynote: Unleashing People. Keeping Trust. Building the Future

AI and Build Versus Buy— Hard Truths, Strategic Tradeoffs, and Will It Work?

As enterprise AI adoption accelerates, technology leaders face intriguing questions: should organizations build their own software to replace the commercial solutions they’ve moved to strategically for decades? Is a hybrid approach the answer? Why can’t it be straightforward?

Let’s cut through the hype to examine the real-world viability of enterprise AI strategies, from custom development and internal AI libraries to commercial platforms and managed frameworks. CIOs, digital leaders, and industry partners will share where organizations are seeing some success, where expectations are outpacing reality, and why AI is not a universal fit for every business function or operational environment.

Key considerations include compliance and governance constraints, mission-critical limitations, release and support frameworks, talent and operational readiness, and long-term implications of maintaining tool-built AI ecosystems.

Moderator: Rob Lloyd, Executive Director, Center for Digital Government

Tim Marczewski, Director of AI and Innovation, State of Missouri

Chris Seidt, Director of Information Technology, Louisville Metro Government, Kentucky

Mark Wittenburg, Chief Information Officer, City of Raleigh, North Carolina

Break

Small Bets, Key Decisions, Redesigning Our Teams

Enterprise transformation comes as a single sweeping initiative. Organizations making meaningful progress in AI are seeing a mix of organizational, change, and technical considerations: placing strategic small bets, learning quickly, using insights to reshape services, looking at how to reshape whole operating models, and considering their workforce structures.

This panel will explore how CIOs and enterprise leaders are moving from isolated pilots to sustainable, enterprise-scale transformation. As AI adoption accelerates, organizations must rethink not only technology architecture, but also how security, privacy, cloud operations, governance, and product delivery teams work together. What is in the future for AI officer, data officer, privacy officer, and technology officer roles?

As CIOs and CISOs realign, they are confronting difficult questions around organizational design, leadership accountability, technical role evolution, and long-term operational sustainability.

Moderator: Teri Takai, Chief Programs Officer, Center for Digital Government

Brett Feddersen, Chief Information & Technology Officer, Regional Transportation District, Denver, Colorado

Suma Nallapati, Chief Artificial Intelligence & Information Officer, City and County of Denver, Colorado

Communities of Practice That Work— Building Safe, Collaborative AI Ecosystems

As productive AI adoption accelerates, organizations increasingly recognize they cannot navigate the opportunities and risks alone. Consortiums, coalitions, peer networks, and public-private partnerships are emerging to help stakeholders share lessons, establish guardrails, reduce duplication, and create safer pathways for experimentation and innovation.

This session explores which AI communities of practice are delivering real value, how partnerships are accelerating learning and governance maturity, and what separates productive collaboration from performative participation. Leading governments and industry partners will share how coalition models supporting responsible experimentation, workforce readiness, policy alignment, and scalable innovation without creating unacceptable risk. And how old compliance models are failing the moment of AI speed and scale.

Panelists will share practical approaches to building safe environments for AI testing and knowledge-sharing, including governance frameworks, partnership structures, shared evaluation models, and collaboration strategies—along with candid lessons on what is not working and what consortiums are meeting the needs of the moment.

Moderator: Rob Lloyd, Executive Director, Center for Digital Government

Tre Hargett, Secretary of State, State of Tennessee

Craig P. Orgeron, Ph.D., CPM, Executive Director/CIO, Department of Information Technology Services, State of Mississippi

Sabra Schneider, Chief Information Officer, City of Bellevue, Washington

Lunch

AI Tradeoffs: What Matters Most?

A kinetic exercise where attendees will connect on approaches, similar interests, priorities, and urgencies.

Facilitator:

Rob Lloyd, Executive Director, Center for Digital Government

AI-Ready Infrastructure: Building What Will Deliver

Governments are moving from AI experimentation to AI operations.

Technology stacks and infrastructure must keep up. Cloud architecture,

data pipelines, integration layers, and enterprise platforms are coming

from different eras.

Leaders are now making long-term bets on modernization while managing budget constraints, overlapping legacy portfolios, and the requirements of secure, resilient, and responsive services to support what comes. Getting the stack right is no longer a future problem. It is the current one.

As AI is moving from answering to assisting to acting and controlling. Solutions are routing cases, triggering workflows, querying live systems, and will impact decisions with human oversight and correction. Research finds most governments have already adopted AI agents in some form. Few have put in the governance and observability needed. This session brings together the leaders building both: the infrastructure foundations and the frameworks that make AI something people can use and trust.

Moderator: Rob Lloyd, Executive Director, Center for Digital Government

Nikhil Deshpande, Chief Digital & AI Officer, Office of Digital Services & Solutions, Georgia Technology Authority, State of Georgia

Break

Building With, Not Just Deploying: Trust, Co-Creation, and Accountability in the AI Era

As governments expand the use of AI agents, robotic vision, automation, and intelligent services, trust has emerged as the defining requirement for adoption. Staff need confidence that their organization is deploying technology responsibly. Communities and constituencies demand their governments protect their public interests. And organizations must trust that partners and vendors are operating transparently, securely, and accountably.

This session moves beyond privacy checklists and frameworks toward something more useful but harder: collaborative trust-building when it is designed into the life of an initiative. Leaders will share perspectives on trust infrastructure as an operational approach and how they are building differently to meet the need. Audience breakouts will engage on shaping use of AI with the values of the people the technology is meant to serve.

Moderator: Teri Takai, Chief Programs Officer, Center for Digital Government

Sean McSpaden, Principal Legislative IT Analyst & Committee Administrator, Joint Legislative Committee on Information Management and Technology, State of Oregon

Open Forum: What Does Success Look Like?

Closing Remarks and Next Steps

Rob Lloyd, Executive Director, Center for Digital Government

Teri Takai, Chief Programs Officer, Center of Digital Government

Summit Adjourns

Conference times, agenda and speakers are subject to change.