CIO 100 Award winners show the transformative worth of IT

In overseeing elections, native governments throughout the US are tasked with not solely administering and counting votes however verifying the outcomes — a course of that has taken on heightened significance lately as a consequence of extra intense election scrutiny.

The vote verification course of requires an intensive evaluation of election outcomes to show they’re correct, and might embrace checking for errors or irregularities, comparable to incorrect ballet counts or points with voting machines, in addition to fraud that might undermine election integrity.

A risk-limiting audit (RLA) is one audit kind used for election verification. RLAs decide exactly how a lot hand-counting is critical to substantiate election outcomes to a given degree of confidence. For instance, the nearer the competition, the extra ballots that have to be examined.

To totally automate its RLA course of, the San Francisco Division of Elections partnered with the San Francisco Division of Know-how. Linda Gerull, CIO for the Metropolis and County of San Francisco, and her crew used a mix of in-house software program, open-source programming, and professional algorithms to create an RLA platform able to robotically auditing hundreds of votes on-demand to confirm outcomes. The platform can be able to auditing town’s ranked-choice voting contests, making it the primary such platform able to doing so.

San Francisco’s IT effort “gives better transparency to the general public, minimizes human bias, and saves time,” Gerull says. “In more and more politicized instances, simply performing RLAs can present a measure of confidence to the voter that elections are being run correctly.”

For a have a look at how different CIO 100 Award winners are supporting honest elections, see “Los Angeles IT secures the vote with open supply and the cloud.”

AI avatar helps CSN higher have interaction college students

Group: School of Southern Nevada

Mission: Digital President Zaragoza

IT Chief: Mugunth Vaithylingam, CIO

The School of Southern Nevada turned to cutting-edge expertise — an avatar named Digital President Zaragoza (DPZ) and based mostly on the real-life CSN president — to deal with academia’s longstanding want to interact college students and enhance their academic expertise.

Groups overseen by CSN CIO Mugunth Vaithylingam mixed customized AI visuals, voice, and content material to create this first-of-its-kind customized avatar, which is deployed and rendered from an internet browser utilizing client-side CPUs. The scalable avatar can have lots of of hundreds of conversations individually and concurrently, and is very customizable and interactive in real-time, thereby offering an immersive expertise for every consumer.

Moreover, AI capabilities allow the avatar to adapt to numerous situations, reply to consumer enter, and supply a human-like interplay. For instance, it might study and use college students’ names and supply customized data.

DPZ captures, ingests, organizes, and acts on disparate data seamlessly, permitting for frictionless model interplay throughout all pupil touchpoints. Furthermore, it might talk with college students by means of net and cellular units.

“It helps us tackle the challenges that enormous neighborhood faculties face in offering real-time assist and steerage to college students,” Vaithylingam says. “Particularly in an period when cellular connectedness is ubiquitous, our present era of scholars want the power to get assist and have someplace to go once they really feel overwhelmed proper from the place they’re.”

Vaithylingam provides: “I’m pleased with the truth that we have been capable of create a software that has the potential to make an actual distinction within the lives of scholars.”

With the avatar deployed, CSN officers plan to measure whether or not Digital President Zaragoza improves pupil engagement, studying outcomes, pupil satisfaction, retention, and accessibility, along with producing time and prices financial savings.

Low cost Tire re-engineers its buyer expertise

Group: Low cost Tire

Mission: Low cost Tire Pit Move

IT Chief: Gary Desai, EVP and CIO

Low cost Tire’s Pit Move is a brand new retailer idea that makes use of expertise to place the shopper on the middle of the tire-buying expertise — and within the course of additionally brings worth to workers and the corporate itself.

Pit Move retailer prospects can order tires on-line, schedule an set up appointment, after which full the sale and set up course of through a drive-through lane.

The applied sciences powering this new buyer journey embrace tire scanners and cameras that consider tire tread depth and situation; digital shows that information prospects into particular work bays and supply work updates; and handheld units that allow retailer associates to speak completion of companies.

Revised back-store functions assist this digital-first method.

To ship this transformative product, EVP and CIO Man Desai targeted on creating a minimal viable undertaking and fostering cross-functional collaboration, mobilizing a crew that leveraged user-centered design to develop new archetypes, personas, and “to-be” journey flows.

The launch of the primary Pit Move retailer, situated within the Atlanta space, represents a pivot from a standard brick-and-mortar retailer to a sturdy omnichannel model, enabling Low cost Tire to supply a extra seamless, intuitive buyer expertise with clever workflows that reduce down on retailer go to instances.

The undertaking additionally ensures technicians’ consolation and security as they service prospects. And it yields a number of enterprise metric enhancements, comparable to limiting surplus stock. Furthermore, Pit Move has helped form the corporate’s roadmap for its future, says Chris Chapman, firm vice chairman of IT retailer expertise at Low cost Tire.

“First, it exhibits that Low cost Tire is prepared to put money into inventive and revolutionary new methods to interact with our prospects. Second, this new retailer mannequin will enable Low cost Tire to enter markets/areas the place land and development prices are at a premium and nonetheless present our prospects with a world-class expertise,” Chapman says.

For extra about Low cost Tire’s Pit Move undertaking, see “Low cost Tire tunes IT to reinvent buyer expertise.”

US DoT digitizes car security inspections

Group: Federal Motor Service Security Administration, US Division of Transportation

Mission: SafeSpect: Digitizing Security Inspections of Industrial Automobiles

IT Chief: Pavan Pidugu, CTO

In collaboration with state companions, the Federal Motor Service Security Administration (FMCSA) conducts roughly 3.5 million car inspections throughout the US yearly.

For a few years, the 18,000 security and regulation enforcement officers conducting these inspections needed to navigate 9 separate functions, normally whereas working within the area, usually along with a freeway — a scenario FMCSA officers acknowledged was ripe for digital transformation and an improved worker expertise.

“We needed to supply a safer manner for security enforcements,” says FMCSA CTO Pavan Pidugu, who, working with the CIO and FMCSA management, targeted on delivering a brand new inspection system rapidly.

Starting with information-gathering classes with stakeholders to outline the issues and desires, the Workplace of the CTO (OCTO) leveraged human-centered design ideas and agile improvement ideas to pilot SafeSpect inside 5 months of the undertaking kickoff date.

SafeSpect is the one device-agnostic web-based inspection platform out there that works with or with out connectivity. It contains a single pane of view into all related details about the motor service, car, and driver being inspected, thereby enabling inspectors to make fast data-driven choices.

Furthermore, the applying move and logic streamline data seize by eliminating redundancy and conflicts. It additionally permits inspectors to tailor the expertise to their utilization, carry an enter gadget to the purpose of inspection to eradicate transcription errors, and enter data with minimal keystrokes to attenuate errors and inconsistencies.

Throughout the pilot, the SafeSpect crew noticed a 60% enchancment in time to finish and submit a Degree 3 inspection for approval.

OCTO continues so as to add new capabilities and options to SafeSpect, and Pidugu says his workplace is exploring whether or not SafeSpect might be used for different kinds of inspections.

Generac transforms its enterprise with information

Group: Generac Energy Programs

Mission: PowerInsights

IT Chief: Tim Dickson, CIO

After arriving at Generac Energy Programs as its new CIO, Tim Dickson hosted the corporate’s first-ever hackathon to upskill IT workers and consider the crew. However the occasion yielded a fair larger lead to type of PowerInsights, an interactive geospatial visualization, analytics, and AI software that helps the corporate determine potential new prospects and supply different new market alternatives.

PowerInsights is displayed on an 85-inch touch-screen TV within the firm’s important foyer, permitting workers, executives, and guests (together with prospects) to see and work together with the information. It could actually, for instance, present the place there’s idle energy {that a} buyer (comparable to a utility) may need to promote, and it additionally gives the corporate’s seller community with a holistic view of their enterprise and alternatives to develop.

The undertaking has been transformative for Generac’s enterprise.

“PowerInsights has helped the corporate evolve from a generator producer into an power expertise options supplier,” Dickson says.

As a part of the hackathon, the IT crew sought to realize three issues: to combination the corporate’s information into an enterprise information platform; to construct an API that would offer enterprise entry to that information; and to develop a machine studying algorithm to supply insights on prime of the aggregated IoT information.

The hackathon’s preliminary prototype proved all that was, certainly, technically doable, and it quickly advanced into a proper program that produced PowerInsights.

Along with delivering full visibility of belongings throughout the corporate, PowerInsights additionally options an AI mannequin referred to as PowerScore, which helps the corporate’s gross sales and advertising groups goal potential prospects with campaigns and promotions. Its two different AI fashions, Alternative Rating and Utility Rating, present extra insights about market alternatives.

For a deeper have a look at PowerInsights, see “Generac powers enterprise transformation with information, AI.”

Nice Wolf Resorts goes digital to boost visitor expertise

Group: Nice Wolf Resorts

Mission: Mission Darwin

IT Chief: Ramki Srinivasan, CDIO

Nice Wolf Resorts skilled 40% progress throughout the previous 5 years, with the corporate increasing its footprint in addition to the variety of visitors it hosts. The corporate expects 60% progress to its waterpark-themed resorts within the subsequent three years.

In response, IT — working collaboratively with operations and different practical teams — created a multipronged initiative geared toward delivering extra digital experiences for each visitors and workers.

The initiative’s deliverables embrace new on-site kiosks in addition to new and redesigned cellular capabilities to supply contactless companies, comparable to digital check-in and meals ordering.

One other deliverable makes use of synthetic intelligence to assist the corporate’s lifeguards; right here, IT delivered cameras that use AI to watch waterparks and determine potential questions of safety, with the aim of additional bettering guard response instances.

IT additionally deployed robotic course of automation (RPA) and modernized handbook legacy workflows through a migration to cloud platforms.

Chief Digital and Info Officer Ramki Srinivasan says Mission Darwin targeted on enabling workers “to deal with visitors extra successfully and effectively” whereas additionally bettering the expertise for employees, too.

“We’re making quite a lot of progress addressing these targets,” he says, noting that the undertaking has helped reduce prices and enhance income, too.

For instance, the brand new cellular food-ordering capabilities are delivering verify sizes 50% over walk-in orders. And automation has eradicated 50,000 hours of expert labor yearly, with future workflow automation set to eradicate much more.

Srinivasan says the initiative is important to firm’s progress goals, too. The mix of automating workflows, including digital self-service capabilities, and modernizing legacy functions means employees have been capable of shed low-value handbook duties and might deal with higher-value ones. That not solely improves the shopper expertise however will increase employee effectivity. As Srinivasan explains: “We can’t have the expansion and scale that now we have deliberate with out these enhancements.”

Machine studying helps Novant Well being enhance suicide prevention

Group: Novant Well being

Mission: Behavioral Well being Acuity Threat mannequin for suicide prevention by means of scientific interventions

IT Chief: Karen Hegarty, VP Cognitive Computing

In the case of suicide prevention, a key subject is figuring out sufferers in want. The Columbia-Suicide Severity Score Scale (C-SSRS), a handbook screening software that depends on a affected person’s willingness to specific having suicidal ideas, could be challenged on this space, and so the crew at Novant Well being sought to develop a greater method to discovering potential suicidal ideation.

Karen Hegarty, vice chairman of cognitive computing at Novant Well being, and her crew partnered with clinicians from psychological well being, emergency drugs, and psychiatry to create an automated and data-driven predictive mannequin that examines data from a affected person’s medical report to evaluate the chance of suicidal habits.

The Behavioral Well being Acuity Threat (BHAR) mannequin leverages a machine studying method referred to as random forests, which could be natively hosted within the digital well being report and up to date in near-real time, with outcomes instantly out there to scientific workers.

“This work permits our care crew to determine potential suicidal ideations and have interaction with the affected person in a significant and caring manner,” Hegarty says.

To construct the BHAR mannequin, the Novant Well being crew used historic information from its digital well being information (EHR) system in addition to information from exterior sources.

The BHAR mannequin gives clinicians with a real-time evaluation of danger within the type of a share and color-coded low/medium/excessive vary, all of which is seen within the affected person’s EHR.

The tech crew’s partnership with scientific groups helped construct belief within the mannequin’s accuracy and effectiveness amongst caregivers. And that partnership together with a human-centered method to implementing BHAR ensured that the software match inside scientific workflows.

“The work paid off, and we’re seeing an actual influence on our sufferers, their care, and their lives,” Hegarty says, noting that Novant Well being plans to share the mannequin in order that different healthcare methods can implement it to learn their sufferers.

Oshkosh tracks manufacturing belongings with IoT

Group: Oshkosh Corp.

Mission: Bettering Manufacturing Effectivity by means of IoT Enabled Asset Monitoring

IT Chief: Anu Khare, SVP & CIO

Oshkosh Corp., maker of specialty autos and entry tools, had challenges in its capacity to find elements, autos, and tooling — challenges that created a barrier to better manufacturing effectivity.

To sort out that drawback, Oshkosh IT partnered with manufacturing to construct and implement an IoT-enabled asset-tracking functionality that allows real-time identification of important instruments, elements, and tools in 3D house with accuracy inside 12 inches. The platform, which may additionally monitor asset motion over time to tell material-flow enhancements, works by means of a grid of wi-fi Bluetooth satellite tv for pc nodes put in inside Oshkosh’s manufacturing facility, and every of the corporate’s belongings are tagged with Bluetooth transmitters.

The answer operates just like a GPS system, however it’s localized throughout the store ground, is safer, makes use of much less power, and prices lower than GPS.

Manufacturing crew members can see the geolocation of any half, software, tools, or car with a visible illustration of its coordinate in 3D house. An interactive dashboard with cellular capabilities permits crew members to view satellite tv for pc well being, every tagged asset with real-time location on the specified website, and heatmap information collected over a specified time vary.

The system successfully automates 3,750 hours yearly in simply considered one of Oshkosh’s services, time beforehand spent trying to find important instruments and elements, says Anu Khare, senior vice chairman and CIO. That in flip permits employees “to deal with the manufacturing, leading to improved effectivity,” he provides.

Moreover, the system’s machine studying fashions ship extra worth by scanning asset location information for material-flow optimization.

The corporate continues to scale its use of this asset-tracking system and sees alternatives to make use of the expertise in different areas of its operations.

“We’re solely scratching the floor of the software’s capabilities,” Khare provides.

Reed Smith calls on AI to assist form authorized groups

Group: Reed Smith

Mission: Good Resourcing

IT Chief: Steven W. Agnoli, CIO

Worldwide regulation agency Reed Smith needed to make sure that it was deploying the proper sources to the proper jobs in probably the most environment friendly method to satisfy shopper wants.

It additionally needed to effectively seize its legal professionals’ experience. And it sought to enhance its capacity to make sure that numerous lawyer groups could be fielded and profitable in resolving shopper’s authorized points.

To fulfill these goals, Reed Smith’s expertise crew created Good Resourcing, which makes use of industry-leading processes and AI to supply choice assist for staffing shopper engagements.

Good Resourcing presents a holistic view into lawyer suitability for a specific piece of labor and gives a clearer understanding of areas of utilization weak spot, abilities progress wants, and resourcing enhancements, says agency CIO Steven W. Agnoli.

“Good Resourcing makes data assortment, validation, and sharing simple, and it brings a degree of information accuracy, information, and reporting that was not beforehand doable,” he provides.

Good Resourcing contains in-house developed expertise for allocating and monitoring work requests, figuring out abilities improvement areas, and calculating range and inclusion metrics. Its AI mannequin makes use of a mix of authorized matter information and time labored to foretell lawyer expertise ranges.

Advantages from the Good Resourcing undertaking embrace elevated income as a consequence of faster staffing of engagements with extra acceptable sources, elevated accuracy within the agency’s efforts to workers extra numerous shopper work groups and its capacity to report progress on staffing numerous groups to shoppers.

The undertaking additionally introduced a heightened consciousness of the IT division’s capacity to leverage rising tech for the agency’s profit, Agnoli says, including, “The undertaking has reimagined how groups of legal professionals, directors, and technologists work collectively to convey revolutionary thought to long-established processes.”

Extra US CIO 100 Award winners

The next articles present an in-depth have a look at these and extra of our 2023 US CIO 100 Award successful tasks:

• Atlantic Well being System: “Atlantic Well being streamlines insurance coverage authorization with clever automation”
  Sunil Dadlani, Chief Info & Transformation Officer, CISO
• Avnet: “How Avnet accelerates its product design course of”
  Max Chan, CIO
• Belcorp: “Belcorp reimagines R&D with AI”
  Venkat Gopalan, Chief Digital, Information & Know-how Officer
• CareSource: “How CareSource IT is addressing information interoperability challenges in healthcare”
  Devon Valencia, CIO
• CarMax: “CarMax drives enterprise worth with GPT-3.5”
  Shamim Mohammad, EVP and Chief Info and Know-how Officer
• Cherokee Nation: “Cherokee Nation empowers its residents with IT”
  Paula Starr, CIO
• Low cost Tire: “Low cost Tire tunes IT to reinvent buyer expertise”
  Gary Desai, EVP and CIO
• Dow: “Dow turns to AI to speed up chemical search”
  Nathan Wilmot, IT Director of Information Consumer Partnerships
• Eastman: “How IT does enterprise at Eastman”
  Aldo Noseda, CIO
• Generac: “Generac powers enterprise transformation with information, AI”
  Tim Dickson, CIO
• Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk: “Los Angeles IT secures the vote with open supply and the cloud”
  Aman Bhullar, CIO
• Miami College: “Invoking IT to assist revitalize Indigenous languages liable to extinction”
  David Seidl, VP of IT & CIO
• PepsiCo: “PepsiCo IT redefines direct-to-store enterprise mannequin success”
  Shyam Venkat, Sector CIO
• Purple Hat: “Purple Hat embraces hybrid cloud for inner IT”
  James Palermo, CIO
• Sysco: “Sysco’s recipe for progress facilities on IT”
  Tom Peck, EVP and Chief Info and Digital Officer