Episode 12: ITS on the Rise

It’s 2026, and the future is bright! We are all ready for new beginnings, new challenges and new wins this year.

ITS has gone through a number of changes over the past two plus years, including a leadership reorganization and the launch of the dedicated agency/shared services model. ITS has been called an agency “on the rise” as these changes transform how New York State approaches technology and cybersecurity, leveraging operational excellence to create innovative solutions. 

On today’s episode, Chief Information Officer and Director of ITS Dru Rai will talk about how these changes have shaped New York’s future, as well as how this agency on the rise makes government work better for all New Yorkers.

Thank you for listening to the IT’S a Tech Podcast. For more information about ITS, visit our website at its.ny.gov. Follow us on X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Transcript

0:01
You're listening to the ITS a Tech Podcast, an engaging conversation about the game-changing technology solutions being advanced by the state's Office of Information Technology Services.

 0:12
 Learn how ITS makes IT happen for more than 50 state agencies and over 20 million New Yorkers.

 0:23
 It's 2026 and the future is bright.

 0:26
 We are all ready for new beginnings, new challenges, and new wins this year.

 0:31
 ITS has gone through a number of changes over the past two plus years, including a leadership reorganization and the launch of the Dedicated Agency/Shared Services model.

 0:41
 ITS has been called an "agency on the rise" as these changes transform how New York State approaches technology and cybersecurity, leveraging operational excellence to create innovative solutions.

 0:53
 On today's episode, Chief Information Officer and Director of ITS, Dru Rai will talk about how these changes have shaped New York's future, as well as how this agency on the rise makes government work better for all New Yorkers.

 1:08
 Dru, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

 1:11
 You've been CIO for more than two years now, and you came to the role after a 30-year private sector career.

 1:18
 What surprised you most in your time here with New York State?

 1:23
 Well, I, as you know, I had no experience with the state or federal government.

 1:27
 And a typical image of a state or a federal or government worker was not very positive before I came.

 1:36
 We get that.

 1:37
 And, yeah, and, and, and that's probably typical when I landed here.

 1:42
 And I see people working long hours with very little resources, in many case not a lot of direction and support.

 1:52
 It's, you know, to some extent and inspiring.

 1:55
 And you see that there are people who are serving our public with so many long hours, so much talent out there.

 2:04
 And if I can only provide them direction, dollars, support, you know, whether it's building the right team around them, providing them the goals and guardrails and then you can get way more output of them.

 2:21
 And and that's what exactly what's happening in the last two years.

 2:25
 We had what I will call a inertia, which just needed to be, you know, let go.

 2:32
 And I would say in the last two years, what I've seen is our team is performing at much higher output, not because they're not capable.

 2:42
 It was really a leadership challenge and leadership issue and that has actually changed my outlook to be honest with you.

 2:54
 As you know, I'm already longest serving and one of the reason which keeps me motivated and inspired is, you know, our 4,000+ people who are dedicated and work so hard for somebody else.

 3:11
 You know, working for yourself obviously is very important, but working for somebody else is even harder.

 3:18
 That inspiration continues and that's one of the major reason I come back to work every day.

 3:24
 Absolutely.

 3:26
 I'm glad it was a positive surprise that that New York State gave you. On the other, on the other side,

 3:32
 on the flip side, was there something that was more of a challenge in state service than you thought it would be when you agreed to take this position?

 3:39
 How did you address that challenge?

 3:41
 Well, the obviously there are, you know, regulations and state laws and lot of, you know, they shouldn't be called challenge.

 3:50
 They're more kind of restriction if you want to call it.

 3:52
 And they can become a challenge at a given point of time.

 3:56
 You know, when I came to know that the workforce is unionized and my hair just like on the neck went up. I worked in a large corporation with unionized labor, and you know, sitting on the management side, you get one side of the story, and it was not very positive.

 4:13
 So I was, I guess I was not, I was a little nervous, I have to say.

 4:20
 But coming over here then understanding why this setup is there and let's take example of our union.

 4:28
 I mean, I have a great relationship.

 4:30
 I remember meeting a local leader literally every quarter, going through what's good, what's working, what's not working, how can I help my employees, you know, get better and support better.

 4:42
 And it turned out that union was not a problem, which in fact a lot of things can be solved just working with them and one message,

 4:52
 they can take care of themselves.

 4:55
 State laws, whether it's a hiring or procurement, obviously it's way too complicated.

 5:02
 I understand the purpose and the intent of those laws, but the regulations, they have put one on top of each other has made things slow.

 5:11
 So, they're not wrong per se.

 5:14
 They're just makes you, you know, 18 steps to go through and probably they put it because of nepotism and corruption and fraud and whatnot.

 5:22
 So it, you know, there's another aspect given you know, we deal with services, we deal with software and hardware and some of these things in technology area continues to evolve faster than other commodities.

 5:42
 So not to pick any particular commodity, but if you buy pencils and pens and you know, even cars, they are generally more standardized than you know, software, which is evolving at very fast rate.

 5:56
 I mean take example of AI; by the time you turn your head and there is another tool out there which can do better than the last one.

 6:03
 At least they claim that. So when you use the same procurement process, same hiring process, it just slows you down.

 6:12
 And then obviously the flip side or the good side of that is sometimes you do need to move slow because you might end up wasting money or taxpayer money on something which looks very shiny but looks very inviting and may not deliver anything.

 6:27
 So it comes in both ways, I say.

 6:31
 I mean, what I have learned is how to adapt.

 6:34
 You come in the environment, you understand the constraints, you also understand the strength.

 6:39
 So you do a SWOT analysis and I always kind of focus on what's our strength.

 6:46
 So if I can take our strength and just expand and scale it, I can get more output for our citizens.

 6:56
 I to be honest, I do not focus too much on kind of making people perfect and making team perfect and finding all the flaws.

 7:05
 That's not very helpful.

 7:08
 I think just focus on the strength.

 7:10
 Absolutely.

 7:11
 So we're talking about technology. We're talking about evolution.

 7:15
 Our agency has evolved a bit rapidly in the few...last few years.

 7:21
 We've referred to ITS as an agency on the rise.

 7:25
 What does that phrase mean to you?

 7:28
 Yeah, I think we do a lot of work in ITS and I would say the last decade or so we have not gotten our share in terms of recognition.

 7:41
 And that is I think very important for the folks who actually work hard.

 7:46
 They need to see and be recognized for the hard work we do.

 7:51
 The agency on the rise means not only recognizing our team for the work we do, but also expanding our talent, getting close to our customers, doing the right thing for our citizens, improving our citizens' experience, not thinking about, oh, well, this is the service we provide from state.

 8:13
 Let me build a system for that.

 8:15
 No, think about other way around.

 8:17
 Who is on the other side and how do they consume the service and what you're providing?

 8:23
 Is it consumable to them or not?

 8:25
 So it's a, it's a lot of cultural factor, process factor, policy factor, I would say IT engineering factor, IT operations excellence factor, which we are very keen on improving our metrics.

 8:41
 And just in short, it's it's customer focus, a customer in this case being our client agencies and our citizens.

 8:51
 Absolutely.

 8:52
 Let's dig into that a little bit more.

 8:54
 We can talk about the transition to the new dedicated agency service model.

 8:59
 You have called it, the reform that is driving all other reforms.

 9:03
 What are you trying to accomplish by making this shift?

 9:06
 And where are we on the the journey of of this approach?

 9:10
 How are agencies responding to it?

 9:12
 And how do you ultimately measure the success?

 9:15
 I know that was like 4 questions.

 9:17
 Yeah.

 9:18
 It's our transition from relatively centralized to moving towards a matrix organization whereby we create teams which are dedicated to our clients and there are teams which are shared as shared services, providing support to all agencies through a dedicated team.

 9:40
 The reason the dedicated team is pivot and it's really pivotal to our change is because we now get closer to our customers.

 9:51
 If you want to provide services to our customers, if you want to predict where your customers are going, if you want to be a strategic partner beyond the tactical support, you need to be really close to your customer.

 10:06
 Spend more time and dedicate yourself as if we are doing DMV, as if we are the dot, as if we are the dot, and so on and so forth.

 10:18
 When you start thinking, then you bring technology to solve their problem or think strategically where the agencies are going and and that really you know, again back to customer focus and operational excellence.

 10:36
 Once you're close to your customer, you know what you can do.

 10:40
 Now that dedicated model is pretty close to what we used to have before ITS was created.

 10:47
 Having said that, we still have shared services because we use taxpayer money and we need to find more cost effective ways.

 10:55
 So, we don't need to create 57 data centers, we don't need to create, you know, dozens and dozens of networks.

 11:03
 We don't need to create laptop standards. In many cases like, NY.gov.

 11:10
 We don't need to create a single-sign-on for every, you know, 4,000 applications which we have.

 11:16
 At the same time you do have certain applications.

 11:22
 It's a liquor licensing, liquor license probably may be used, you know, in a different shape and size for cannabis and others.

 11:30
 But you, you're not going to use a liquor license application across 57 agencies.

 11:35
 So there's no point trying to force an application of which needs to go.

 11:40
 Analytics are very specific to agencies.

 11:43
 The work they do, even the advent of AI and application of AI.

 11:49
 There are common solutions like all agencies can use in procurement.

 11:53
 For example, what contracts are need to be renewed, you can simple do a a generative or or predictive AI on that.

 12:03
 At the same time, the data is very specific to each agency and so you have to start with the common AI tool, but you have to train them on a particular context and then it'll become more trained on that specific use case in particular agency.

 12:20
 So in short, our transformation to dedicated agency was really creating a matrix org where on one side we are, we improve our services and our strategic posture with the clients and the other side we use shared services to, to make sure we maximize the value we get of every dollar. Right. Leveraging centralization where it makes sense.

 12:44
 I think you've really already touched on this, but we've shifted from a project-based approach to an emphasis on project, products at ITS, what does productization say about the goals of ITS under your leadership?

 12:58
 So product is a output of a process called project.

 13:06
 We in IT.

 13:09
 Generally if you're a back office IT working for somebody, we focus on project, which is a means to an end.

 13:15
 Ultimately, once the project is done, you deliver a product or it could be a product or it could be a service.

 13:23
 So focusing on product and services is more important because then you know what project or projects you need to do to get to that product and services.

 13:35
 So that's the motivation.

 13:38
 Ultimately, we basically do two things.

 13:41
 One is we either create a brand new product or service using a project or we take existing product and services enhance, change or modify just to make sure our needs.

 13:55
 So our projects need to be aligned with the products.

 13:58
 So I think one of the key things our client look for is obviously they're going to pay you for project to build a product, but you need to be very clear what product you're building, what will be the service level when it's up and running, what kind of support your client can expect, how you're going to keep up, you know, with the technology and changes over the years.

 14:23
 If you consider all those things, then whatever projects you're going to do to, to, to in alignment with those product services, it makes a ton of sense.

 14:33
 And most importantly, our clients are, you know, projects are great for new stuff and everybody focuses on that.

 14:42
 You know, well, I have $2,000,000, you have $10 million projects, so on and so forth, which is great from the financial perspective.

 14:48
 But once the product is up and running, everybody assumes that,"Oh well, this is OK." Well, that's now how your supplier works.

 14:57
 Think about this.

 14:58
 I mean, you think Microsoft cares about the project we do to implement 365?

 15:04
 They don't.

 15:05
 They give you the tool. They expect the every year, a subscription charge, they guarantee the availability, they guarantee patches and so on and so forth.

 15:14
 Same is true for Salesforce and on and on and on.

 15:17
 We are a value-add provider using many tools.

 15:23
 You know from our supplier community to our clients.

 15:26
 We need to make sure to our customers, we're not delivering 365 or Salesforce, we're actually delivering a much more.

 15:34
 If for example, security is taken care of, privacy is taken care of, single-sign-on is taken care of.

 15:41
 Sometimes in Salesforce you might have to write a very specific code, which is taken care of.

 15:47
 So there's a ton of value add, which we do before we buy basic tools and platforms.

 15:53
 And that's what we need to explain to our clients that ultimately when all these things are said and done in through the project, you will get a product with this service and this expectation.

 16:06
 And that's a key shift I would say, in our organization.

 16:12
 And we're working very hard on that.

 16:14
 I wouldn't say we're on the other side, but every team has been able to create at least their version of product and services.

 16:23
 And lastly, it's very important for client to understand what do they pay for? Each one is paying X $1,000,000 for example.

 16:31
 They need to know they're paying for this, this, this.

 16:34
 These are the product and services we operate and and that's why we're asking money. Operations is just assumed free.

 16:42
 That's just a wrong assumption. In ITS, if you think about it, actually most of her work is supporting operations, not projects.

 16:52
 So I think that's why pivoting towards product is really important.

 16:56
 Now that makes complete sense in in the terms of, you know, they're not going to the store and getting a thing off the shelf and just putting it in their agency and making it work.

 17:05
 This is a full suite of support that we offer with that software, so that makes complete sense.

 17:12
 Related, recently the ITS working with the Office of Customer Experience, sponsored the state's first ever New York Experience Summit.

 17:21
 250 state leaders gathered for an entire day of informative sessions, hands on workshops, all of it dedicated to optimizing the experience of New Yorkers who are seeking government services.

 17:34
 Explain how ITS is improving customer experience and closing the gap between New York State government and the residents we serve.

 17:43
 Yeah, most of the time any organization creates system and processes to offer its product and services what they think a customer's need or citizens need.

 17:56
 And that's OK.

 17:57
 But then comes how do actually our citizens consume that?

 18:02
 So pivoting from production of product services to consumption of product services is what we call UI UX, because now you're looking the same thing from a consumption perspective.

 18:20
 And that's why the summit was very important.

 18:25
 And all the work we do, we even have a team just dedicated to making sure user experience is part and parcel of every product and services we create.

 18:37
 And that's simply because we want to think about citizens' perspective.

 18:40
 We also have citizens with accessibility issues, so not everybody is created equal in terms of capability.

 18:50
 How do we serve those people who are challenged with accessibility?

 18:55
 If you don't have UX/UI perspective, you will not be able to do it because you're just offering from the production from the producer perspective.

 19:04
 And and that's, you know, even our governor recognized that, I mean the fact that she created office of customer experience that shows that our services need to be taught in terms of our citizens and how they consume those.

 19:20
 So that's why I think this is just one thing which we are embedding in everything we do.

 19:27
 Any system today specifically build which has any impact on citizen goes through this process and make sure the Luke and team are engaged in that.

 19:36
 And we also should do that for all employees too.

 19:39
 But I think we at least we got to do it for all citizen applications.

 19:43
 Absolutely.

 19:44
 And as a reminder to our listeners, there is an episode in our back catalog specifically with the Human-Centered Design team.

 19:50
 If you haven't listened to that, it's a great listen, highly recommend, and we'll give you a little bit more information on our accessibility efforts here at ITS.

 19:58
 So backing up all of these efforts that we do is always cybersecurity.

 20:03
 ITS provides cybersecurity services to more than 50 New York State agencies, numerous local governments and other organizations through the Security Operations Center in New York City.

 20:14
 Could you talk about the importance of a whole-of-state cybersecurity approach and give us like a 30,000 foot view of the current threat landscape?

 20:23
 What are some actions ITS has taken to enhance the state's overall cybersecurity posture?

 20:28
 Yeah, that's a lot of question in one question.

 20:30
 I, I know I do.

 20:31
 I'm doing that a lot today.

 20:33
 Yeah, it's, I mean, first of all, you know, I want to start with JSOC.

 20:38
 I, I have to say that Governor Hochul and our Chief Cyber Officer and our CISO, probably those are the three to, you know, thank our citizens that we have created JSOC in collaboration with so many counties and cities and we work together as a team to address cybersecurity issues beyond state agencies.

 21:08
 And that is one-of-a-kind in, in the whole nation.

 21:13
 No other state operated JSOC the way we operate.

 21:18
 The second aspect is, you know, we not only are responsible for our our state agency and clients, but also running the JSOC.

 21:33
 When you think about size and scale, the threats are many times the same threat shows up in, you know, everywhere.

 21:44
 One of the key things Chris and team have is the red team and that's probably, I would say one of the best team we have in the nation.

 21:54
 That team, you know, their skills and technical ability, I'm sure they are stressed with, you know, amount of work they have and that's because they are so good that we give them more work.

 22:07
 That's one-of-a-kind again in the nation operating JSOC and SoC in general, when you think about, you know, the evolving landscape of cyberthreat, you know, cyberthreat from basic blocking and tackling, you know, we have, we haven't patched everything.

 22:32
 I mean, we are so behind our infrastructure.

 22:35
 We have, we, we, we are running things which you know, should not be running.

 22:40
 They are so old.

 22:42
 So that's kind of, I would say actually that's probably 50 plus percent of the work.

 22:46
 Because if we can take care now you can think about evolving.

 22:52
 Social engineering has become a really, you know, everywhere from you and me to corporation.

 23:01
 And especially with the advent of AI, the social engineering has exploded because people can use codes and they can use your emotions to make mistakes.

 23:14
 And that's all it takes.

 23:15
 One mistakes and one e-mail, one link, one download is enough to, you know, make a big mess.

 23:23
 I would say not, not the emerging threat of generative AI and predictive AI, which is also we have to take a look at the architecture and how those codes and data is transmitted and used.

 23:41
 But the bad guys using every possible machine learning and AI tool to do the damage and just look for a simple mistake from our users is remarkable.

 23:56
 And it is so big.

 23:58
 I mean, last time I checked, I can guarantee you over a period of 365 days probably we get I would say 5 billion plus attack.

 24:08
 That's not even funny just to kind of think about how many you know 90% of attacks hopefully never pass the firewall, the network, but the attacks continue.

 24:21
 I mean now you have human beings don't do these attacks, bots do that and the one person can create 100,000 bots which can create a million attacks a day.

 24:34
 So think about the size and scale of these things and if you are specially running code, you know, exposed at a old and, and vulnerable, well, it's just a matter of time that these guys will find it.

 24:51
 So our challenges obviously are not different than anybody else, but being in government, we are definitely a great target.

 24:58
 We have the kind of data we collect for our citizens is so valuable that if these guys can get their hands, they will love to do that.

 25:06
 And that puts us definitely in a, in a situation where we need to guard it even harder than other people should.

 25:14
 And, and you know, again, thanks to governor and legislature that they have realized that the cyber is not going anywhere, cyberthreats.

 25:25
 It's only going to get worse.

 25:27
 It's just a matter of, you know, when you create technology and you do all the kind of cool stuff and great and user experience and, and faster code and, and better, you know, a functionality and all those things.

 25:41
 Well, the bad guy's using the same tools and technology to figure out how they can, you know, do some damage.

 25:47
 So that cat and mouse game, you know, will just continue to evolve.

 25:52
 Absolutely.

 25:53
 That's why we're on it.

 25:55
 Dru, I am so sorry to say we are coming to the end of our time.

 25:59
 But before you go, we ask all of our guests one final question.

 26:04
 What are you most excited about this coming year?

 26:06
 It can be anything.

 26:07
 It can be work related.

 26:08
 It can be not work related, though

 26:10
 I will say our listeners, given everything you've said today, we'll definitely want to hear what's coming down the pike for ITS.

 26:17
 There are a few things I'm excited.

 26:18
 I think in short term, you know, it took me two years to get to a place where I feel like I can see some of the fruits of the changes which we are trying to make. Number one is the talent acquisitions and talent management.

 26:35
 I would say, you know, from September of 2024, I think to today, we are way better.

 26:47
 We have more talent than we ever had and that journey will continue.

 26:52
 We have opened offices announced.

 26:55
 New York City will continue to expand throughout the state.

 26:59
 We have all kinds of job fairs.

 27:01
 We are looking for talent and that's probably the most important thing I think we have.

 27:08
 The other thing I'm excited is is you know a governor which who is who is running on absolutely awesome platform from abundance to reducing red tape, taking care of children and families and all kinds of benefit to our citizen.

 27:30
 I'm really looking forward to she winning the November election and so that ITS can continue its journey for the next 4 years.

 27:39
 So I and personally, I am excited that hopefully I'll lose some weight and get more, you know, more healthy, not that I don't have healthy practice, but you know, it's January, obviously, right.

 27:52
 So New Year's resolutions 2026.

 27:54
 Let's go.

 27:54
 Yeah, at least until February 15th, at least I can think of these things.

 27:58
 So, and as a as a gym goer, you know, I very supportive of all of everyone's goals.

 28:04
 But if you could like maybe not be at the gym when I'm there, that would be great.

 28:08
 Drew, Drew, you're always welcome, always welcome at the gym.

 28:13
 Drew, thank you so much for talking to us today.

 28:16
 And we're looking forward to some amazing things here at ITS in 2026.

 28:21
 Thank you, Natasha, it's been a pleasure.

 28:22
 Thank you for listening to It's a tech podcast.

 28:25
 For more information about ITS, visit ourwebsite@its.ny.gov.