James M. Fowler is a Board Member of the State CIO Council at RIDGE-LANE LP.
Mr. Fowler is the former Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, where he lead a department of 800 staff and managed a budget of $130mm, supporting the information technology infrastructure for 4,340,000 citizens, with a focus on facilitating cross-agency communications and collaboration, providing cyber-security and compliance to insure the data of the Commonwealth’s citizens and businesses is safe and secure, generating opportunities for greater cost effectiveness by consolidation and centralization of IT infrastructure and support services throughout the Executive Branch of state government, and by capitalizing on economies of scale and alternative sourcing strategies.
He served as the 1st Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology and Telecommunications for the City of New York, where he lead a department of 600 staff and managed a budget of $200mm, supporting the information technology infrastructure for 8,399,000 citizens, with a focus on advancing the use of public-private partnerships to deliver affordable high-speed network capability to underserved areas of the city, providing a safe and secure state-of-the-art shared services environment, and delivering secure voice and video networks to the city’s first responders.
Mr. Fowler was the Chief Technology Officer at the University of Louisville where he instituted a multi-layered IT Governance Model to create a culture of ownership and to introduce the use/value of strategic sourcing. He led the effort to implement a third-party telecommunications infrastructure as a model for further Infrastructure-as-a-Service evaluations.
Prior roles include Vice-President of Information Technology for the New York City Transit Authority, Chief Information Officer for the Chicago Transit Authority, and Chief Information Officer at York International Corporation.
Mr. Fowler has served on the Board of the National Association of State CIO’s, the APTA Research and Technology Committee, and the FCC Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC).
