Maria Macgunigal, CIO of Sacramento, California

What have you and your team accomplished in the past year that you want people to know about?

I am really proud of the work that we did in terms of digital equity. We did develop and deliver a digital equity program for the community, which was a million dollars in CARES funding in partnership with many community-based organizations and the United Way to get computers and hotspots and connectivity services and education to people who needed it. We really kind of muscled down in terms of building relationships with the right parts of the community so we could reach those vulnerable people. We did collect some demographic data about that and we do feel like we really did meet our objective in that regard, rather than just kind of putting out general messaging that we have these services or devices.

What have some of your largest challenges been?

Like many organizations, we didn’t have a lot of experience with remote work. I would say some divisions and some departments throughout the city had some experience, but it was pretty limited. So as we moved to a fully remote environment, it really was a big lift for the organization to shift how it gets work done and how managers and supervisors support their teams in a remote environment.