Denver, Colo.—The Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) is pleased to announce that Colorado was recognized at the 2015 StateScoop 50 Awards with four honors in three categories.

Monica Coughlin, Chief Strategy Officer with OIT won the Golden Gov: State Executive of the Year 2015 award for her leadership in IT economic development. State Representative Max Tyler won the State Leadership Award 2015 for his continued support of IT strategies in Colorado. Additionally, OIT was awarded State IT Program of the Year 2015 for two projects: the Department of Revenue Infrastructure Modernization Initiative and last year’s Program Eligibility & Application Kit (PEAK) Enhancements.

Secretary of Technology and Chief Information Officer Suma Nallapati says, “These awards are just one indication of the work we do every day at OIT and across the state of Colorado. The true reward is seeing our projects positively impact wait times and accessibility to critical services in our state. I am so grateful for our team and for the leaders across the state who support our efforts.”

The 2015 StateScoop Awards honor the best and the brightest making state government more efficient and effective. An awards ceremony was held last night in Washington, D.C., during the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) midyear conference. Below is more information about Colorado’s four winners.

Monica Coughlin
3,000 new IT jobs in Colorado is a big deal… and that’s just in the first six months of 2014. The final numbers roll in later this year, but Colorado’s IT office is doing something unique compared to most other state IT organizations by driving IT economic development. At the helm of these efforts is Chief Strategy Officer Monica Coughlin. Monica and her team build on existing relationships and foster new ones between businesses and the State of Colorado that bolster a highly robust IT ecosystem. Two of the companies Monica worked with last year could bring another 400 new tech jobs to Colorado.

Representative Max Tyler
State Representative Max Tyler is a technology champion who ensures that agencies solve true business problems -- and don’t just implement new technology. Several years ago when the Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS) was struggling with negative press, Rep. Tyler understood the failure wasn’t the technology, but the business processes supporting it.

CBMS started to thrive after a fiscal commitment from the General Assembly. At that point, Rep. Tyler saw the benefit of lawmakers weighing in on IT projects and, with Colorado’s tech future in mind, established and chaired the Joint Technology Committee to gauge IT project costs, effectiveness and enterprise utilization. Rep. Tyler continues to champion business process re-engineering to enable Colorado to leverage technology.

Program Eligibility and Application Kit (PEAK) Enhancements
In 2014 three major enhancements were made to the Program Eligibility and Application Kit (PEAK), the online service for Coloradans to screen and apply for medical, food, and cash assistance programs. The new customer chat function has diverted an estimated 5,196 calls (38,450 minutes) since June 22, saving the state $322/month. The new PEAK email form has diverted an estimated 15,596 calls (115,410 minutes) since June 22, resulting in savings of $966/month. The last enhancement, a customer self service for certain services, has diverted an estimated 7,844 calls, saving $549/month since Aug. 1.

Department of Revenue Infrastructure Modernization Initiative
In 2014 the Governor’s Office of Information Technology completed the Colorado Department of Revenue’s Infrastructure Modernization initiative; an incredible project that completely upgraded systems, resulting in faster service and greater accuracy.

The project modernized the core data infrastructure and facilitated the migration of mission-critical applications -- the state’s core tax system, sales tax analysis, sales tax calculator, and motor vehicle renew by mail, emissions and accident reporting, among others -- to a virtualized environment, and implemented security control consistent with state standards and security best practices.

This was the single largest, non-enterprise infrastructure improvement since Colorado’s 2008 IT consolidation.