Registration and Morning Refreshments

Opening Remarks

Nate Denny, Secretary and Chief Information Officer, Department of Information Technology, State of North Carolina

Keynote – EMBRACE THE SHAKE: Transforming Limitations into Opportunities

Success, especially in today’s fast-changing business environment, depends on our ability to make creativity and innovation a continuous process. Leaders want to know how their teams can rise above any challenge and succeed no matter what comes their way. Whether the goal is to embrace change, overcome obstacles, sustain growth, or take your success to the next level, leaders and teams want to learn how to “Embrace the Shake.” The term “Embrace the Shake” is coined from artist Phil Hansen’s personal story of transformation. After developing a career-ending tremor in his drawing hand, Phil embraced his “shake” both physically and metaphorically by redefining his limitation as an impetus for creativity. Phil not only restored his artistic abilities, but he also became a much more creative and innovative artist than ever before. Phil’s powerful message of finding creativity within limitations will inspire you to stop looking outside and start looking within for the resources that can transform your challenges into opportunities for success.

Phil Hansen, Artist, Speaker, Author and Innovator

General Session – Pokey? Disaster portal? Resident experience

Networking Break

Concurrent Sessions

From Prompting to Delegating

This session shares how the public sector is leading a new era of innovation. Attendees will get an introduction to the latest generation of frontier models — the most powerful yet, built on a foundation of agentic reasoning and multimodality — and see how no-code agents grounded in enterprise data can automate work using a library of pre-built tools and actions. The session closes with a practical look at getting started, walking through an agent catalog and real day-one use cases drawn from state government.

Building a Workforce Ready for What’s Next

The pace of change in government technology has outrun most training programs — and the gap between the tools agencies are deploying and the skills their people have to use them is widening. This session focuses on practical approaches to workforce development that actually stick: how to assess where your organization stands, how to build internal champions who can carry learning across departments, how to design training that reaches people at different levels of technical comfort, and how to make the case for sustained investment in upskilling when budgets are tight. The conversation draws on real examples from across state and local government and leaves room for attendees to share what's working — and what isn't — on their own teams.

Privacy and Data: Building the Foundation for Secure Information Sharing

Data-mature agencies that get this right are the ones that can move faster, share more confidently, and avoid the kind of headline-making incidents that set everyone back. This session cuts through the compliance-speak to talk practically about what good data governance actually looks like on the ground: how to get a real handle on what data you have and who should be touching it, how to build privacy protections that actually get followed, and how to make data sharing between state and local partners work without introducing new vulnerabilities in the process. Bring your messiest data problem — this is a judgment-free zone.

Mirror Image: Staff Experience = Citizen Experience

The experience a constituent has with a government service and the experience the employee has delivering it are two sides of the same system — when the internal tools are clunky, the public feels it, and no amount of front-end polish fixes a broken back end. This session reframes user experience as a single connected problem, exploring how improving internal workflows and public-facing services together produces better outcomes than tackling either alone — all while meeting the mandate to make government genuinely accessible. The throughline is staying anchored to the outcome: the real problem being solved, and the people on both sides of the desk it's being solved for legal, communications.

Lunch

General Session

Short Break

Please proceed to the concurrent sessions

Concurrent Sessions

The Delivery Problem: Modernizing How Government Builds

The hard part of modernization isn't the public-facing storefront — it's the delivery model behind it. Legacy systems are aging, budgets won't cover wholesale replacement, and procurement often moves slower than the technology it's meant to acquire. As new tools lower the barrier to building software, the build-versus-buy line is shifting fast, raising hard questions about what teams can credibly build themselves, who owns the path from prototype to production, and how to keep delivery evolving when the old "30/60/90" playbooks no longer fit. Join state and local technology leaders for a candid exchange on modernizing how government actually builds.

Identity, Fraud, and the Future of Digital Trust in Government Services

The fraud landscape facing government agencies has changed significantly: rings are more dispersed, identities are easier to fabricate, and the pressure points have shifted to corners of government that weren’t previously high-risk targets — including education benefits, where ghost student schemes have become an increasing concern. This session examines where fraud is heading across the full identity lifecycle, from enrollment and eligibility verification through ongoing account management and re-authentication. Panelists will discuss how fraud tactics are evolving, what detection capabilities agencies need to keep pace, and how identity proofing strategies can be strengthened without creating friction that drives away legitimate residents. Designed for agency leaders responsible for benefits administration, eligibility programs, and digital identity infrastructure.

Watching Responsibly: The Future of Public Safety Technology

Public safety is being reshaped by new technology, drones as first responders, license plate readers, and interconnected camera networks that see more, faster, than ever before. But every new sensor raises questions about privacy, data minimization, and public trust: How much data do you really need to collect, how long should you keep it, and what has to be disclosed to the public? This session brings state and local leaders together for a candid conversation about adopting public safety technology responsibly — capturing only what serves a clear purpose, building retention and disclosure practices that sustain public trust, and getting legal, privacy, and operational voices to the table before deployment, not after.

Exclusive Briefing for Industry Partners

Networking Break in the Exhibit Area

General Session

Networking Reception

Network with your colleagues and discuss technology solutions with the event sponsors.

Conference times, agenda, and speakers are subject to change.