For all the statewide initiatives that make headlines, IT has some of its biggest impacts at the local level, and Glenn Angstadt knows it better than most. A county-level chief information officer since 2007 and a senior tech manager before that, Angstadt has landed Chester County, Pa., on the Center for Digital Government’s* list of the Top 10 Digital Counties in its size category the past three years in a row. He credited forward-thinking county commissioners with funding his initiatives, particularly ones that have made Chester’s open GIS infrastructure among the best in the state.
More regionally, over the past seven years he’s led a handful of county CIOs around Philadelphia in creating a centralized records management system for law enforcement, the Law Enforcement Justice Information System (LEJIS). Today it gives 45 municipalities and about 30 police departments access to the same database of incident reports, and local CIOs are working on adding others.
An active member of the Pennsylvania County Commissioners Association, he’s also involved with the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center on cybersecurity issues. Angstadt recently began working with the National Association of Counties, where he’s focused on the shift in IT from hardware to data services. This move has his attention because of its “huge implications” for the very nature of IT and how it serves government.
“I’m just at a point where I’m buying capacity as I need it,” he said. “[Moving county functions to the cloud] allows the IT department to focus on relationships, understanding the business that county departments are in, and helping them use technology to make their operations more efficient. It’s not about keeping the lights on as much anymore.”
*The Center for Digital Government is part of e.Republic, Government Technology's parent company.
Editor's note: After press time, Governmnet Technology learned that Angstadt had left his position with Chester County.
