Congratulations to Scottsdale Chief Information Officer Bianca Lochner recently named one of the Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers by Government Technology magazine

Bianca Lochner has been the CIO of Scottsdale, Ariz., for just over a year and a half, but you might assume her tenure has been much longer if you look at her body of work. Since then, the Phoenix suburb has published its first-ever IT strategic plan to guide an ambitious agenda that includes infrastructure modernization, fostering a data-driven and cyber-resilient culture, and weaving innovation throughout every endeavor.
When she arrived, more than half of Scottsdale’s enterprise applications had been in use for more than 15 years. Lochner engaged business partners around the city to “leave our technical debt behind and strategically go about planning for the future.”
One example of this future focus made the desert city more efficient when it comes to managing water. Transmitters were installed on the water meters of Scottsdale’s 94,000 customers. Now, simply driving by those houses and businesses allows city vehicles to pick up usage information.
A cornerstone of Lochner’s strategy is a shift toward the cloud, like a new platform to grow data analytics capabilities throughout the city. To date, there are more than 1,000 people registered to share and analyze data to move the city forward in its modernization journey. And those users aren’t just on Lochner’s IT teams — it’s truly an organization wide priority to put data at the forefront of their operation. Five master classes are available for employees to help grow data literacy, and Lochner reports that more are coming.
External partnerships are also helping to fuel greater data innovation in Scottsdale, like its recent selection as a Bloomberg Philanthropies City Data Alliance program participant. Scottsdale is building a beacon data service with a resident facing short-term rental platform as its inaugural project. In development now, the tool is aimed at giving stakeholders greater visibility into compliance information and an avenue to voice their concerns.
“We want to take it to the next level where we really care about the customer, the resident experience,” Lochner explained. “How do we empower them to know what’s happening in their communities, and maybe even have a say in terms of how their communities are changing with short-term rentals in their areas?”
The approach represents Lochner’s larger philosophy for IT in Scottsdale: “I want to make sure that IT is a successful, efficient change agent for the organization,” she said.