Michael Mayta has been CIO of the City of Wichita, Kan., for 14 years. He oversees IT across 17 departments ranging from the police to the local airport — with widely varying degrees of internal technical savvy.
He’s also seen a lot of change in how cities use technology. Here are some pearls of wisdom from his experience.
What have you learned about keeping up with evolving technology?
One thing Mayta has learned about technological innovations is to sort out the hype. “We use the cloud for a lot of things. But I find it funny that it started as the internet, and then it was the web, and now it’s the cloud. It’s really all the same thing.”
But he’s also seen the cloud’s benefits change over time. At one point, a main selling point was that it allowed you to pay for only what you used. That solved a problem Mayta didn’t have. “We know what we’re using two years ahead because of the budgetary process,” he explained.
On the other hand, he’s now doing a proof-of-concept project with Microsoft’s Dataverse cloud platform because it offers tools and storage that would be out of reach otherwise. “For me to buy all that stuff would not be feasible,” Mayta remarked. In choosing what to adopt, he goes old-school: costs vs. benefits. “I keep it based on how I’ve always made decisions. It’s a value proposition,” Mayta said. That doesn’t make it a purely financial decision, though. “In the public sector, the benefits can be less quantifiable, so it does become a little more challenging.”
What have you learned about creating an environment where employees feel like they belong?
Mayta recognizes that the city needs to offer employees some working conditions they won’t find in corporate jobs. “I think in the public sector you have to be a little more flexible. If I push as hard for results as the private sector, why wouldn’t you just go to the private sector, where you’ll be paid more? So, I’m not going to say, ‘If you don’t stay up until midnight every night this week and get this thing out the door by Friday at 8 a.m., we’re going to put all your things in a box and off you go.’ We’re not doing that,” he said.
Flex time and remote work also contribute to an environment that accommodates student interns, employees with kids and a cadre of mid-career specialists.
But the most important factor may be an emphasis on mission. “I think in the public sector, it’s about making sure that our folks understand that they actually are making a difference,” Mayta said. “The work they do has tangible impact. People get housing because we’ve helped them sign up for it. If the police catch a bad guy, we provided the data and networks that helped make it happen.”
What have you learned about translating policy into management goals?
Sometimes the issue isn’t so much implementing policy as educating city leaders about what’s possible so that the policies they set are practical to implement, Mayta said. He sees his role as bringing departments and business units up to speed on their digital options. “Because what value is there in discussing a policy on content that they don’t really understand?” he asked.
With technology changing so fast, it can be a challenge even for seasoned IT professionals to keep up. He doesn’t expect his non-tech colleagues to do so. “They’re running their organizations, which is what they’re paid to do,” Mayta said. On the other side, he can’t be an expert in managing the services those departments provide. “It’s more of a partnership, an open discussion, that has to be continuing,” he said.
“Imagine the director of public works, whose main task is not IT, and I come along and say, ‘We can connect all your traffic lights,’” Mayta said. “What’s [the value of] that? How do we do it? I try to just isolate things that are relative to what they need to do from a business perspective. Like, ‘AI, what can it be used for? Automation, how do you incorporate that?’”
This article appears in our guide, “Conversations With CXOs: Lessons Learned in Management, Workforce and Technology.” For more insights from the C-suite, download it here:
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