Kate
Director of Technology
“Everyone says 'we will use technology to deliver this,' and then my budget gets cut. I am always expected to do more with less.”
Through her role as Director of Technology for her school district, Kate strives to push technology best practices toward main operating functions, while providing architectural oversight on how these technologies are implemented within her organization.
Her typical responsibilities include establishing and communicating requirements for acquiring technology applications, services, systems and equipment; and negotiating and managing vendor contracts to ensure they meet cost, safety and performance standards. She also ensures internal and external systems are safe, secure, and running and performing as they should, by actively monitoring and responding to incidents that might affect highly available and performant systems.
With stretched budgets, Kate struggles to maintain and train her IT staff. Supporting the district’s technology solutions has become cumbersome, since the lack of a holistic solution has led to a chaotic blend of software solutions that vary by department.
Kate wishes she could act on the many opportunities she sees to leverage data and technology to help her district offer more relevant and efficient services.