{"id":201948,"date":"2026-04-03T13:06:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/03\/mississippi-names-new-chief-technology-officer\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T13:15:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:15:15","slug":"mississippi-names-new-chief-technology-officer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/03\/mississippi-names-new-chief-technology-officer\/","title":{"rendered":"Mississippi names new chief technology officer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mississippi names new chief technology officer<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/statescoop.com\/mississippi-steve-patterson-cto\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-03 13:06:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: statescoop.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

Mississippi\u2019s technology department on Thursday announced that it\u2019s promoted Steve Patterson, its director of data services, to serve as the state\u2019s chief technology officer.<\/p>\n

In a post on LinkedIn, Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services congratulated Patterson, who will lead \u201centerprise technology operations, guide statewide IT modernization efforts, and ensure secure, scalable, and reliable services that support Mississippi agencies and citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patterson replaces Brian Norwood, who spent 25 years with ITS, first writing code as a Java developer and then working his way into the C suite. Norwood stepped down from public service last November to take a role as director of infrastructure services with Trustmark Bank. Patterson also has two decades of state service \u2014 he joined Mississippi\u2019s state government in 2006 as an open systems manager, a role he held for 13 years.<\/p>\n

Craig Orgeron, Mississippi\u2019s chief information officer, told Government Technology that Patterson will support \u201ccontinued modernization efforts, strengthening alignment across enterprise technology operations\u201d and meeting a growing demand for services across the state government.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteve has a strong combination of technical depth, leadership capability, and practical understanding of the operational challenges facing government IT organizations today,\u201d Orgeron said in an email. \u201cAnd just as important, he understands the importance of collaboration, service, and execution in a public-sector environment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Patterson assumes Mississippi\u2019s CIO role at a time of high activity. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday approved legislation to create the state\u2019s first cybersecurity operations center, which will be housed in the technology department. Orgeron told this publication last month that the new body, designed as a cross-agency meeting point for managing the state\u2019s operational cybersecurity, \u201cmarks a significant step forward in our ability to protect the citizens and infrastructure of Mississippi from cyber threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mississippi IT Optimization Act, meanwhile, is propelling greater centralization of the state\u2019s IT services, as the technology bureau attempts to reduce duplication across agencies. State Rep. Bart Williams, who co-sponsored that bill, recently estimated that a single consolidation \u2014 of 31 Microsoft email licenses \u2014 would save the state as much as $2 million.<\/p>\n

Patterson may also join an effort to stand up a statewide data exchange, a project approved by the legislature last year. Usman Tareen, a consultant with Gartner Research, last month reported to state lawmakers that while Mississippi has strong data security, its ability to share data across agencies is highly limited: \u201cThere is no fluidity of data movement between different agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\tWritten by Colin Wood
\n\t\t\tColin Wood is StateScoop’s editor in chief. Contact him at colin.wood@statescoop.com or cwood.64 on Signal.\t\t<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mississippi names new chief technology officer https:\/\/statescoop.com\/mississippi-steve-patterson-cto\/ Publish Date: 2026-04-03 13:06:00 Source Domain: statescoop.com Author:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1321033543.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24,28],"class_list":["post-201948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity","tag-data-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201948"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201950,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201948\/revisions\/201950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}