New Mexico will promote from within to fill its top technology spot, Lujan Grisham announced at a press conference Wednesday, according to the Albuquerque Journal. Martinez, who has been with DoIT for more than two years, has been nominated to serve as secretary of the department and state CIO.
Martinez brings both public- and private-sector experience to the position, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has served two terms in New Mexico's House of Representatives from 1993 to 1997. Before joining DoIT, Martinez held positions with Fujitsu, Verizon, NetApp and EMC.
Martinez will fill a vacancy left by longtime CIO Darryl Ackley, who stepped down at the end of August; the role has been handled in an interim capacity since then. Ackley returned to a career in academia, as chief technology officer at the Institute for Complex Additive Systems Analysis at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
Ackley was nominated by Gov. Susanna Martinez in January 2011, and he led DoIT through tech modernizations including updating and consolidating New Mexico’s public safety infrastructure and bringing legacy systems like human resources online. Many barriers to IT modernization in a state like New Mexico, Ackley told GT earlier this year, are just as much about replacing copper wiring — Santa Fe, the state capital, is one of the oldest cities in the country — as they are about implementing the latest emerging tech.
Gov.-elect Lujan Grisham will take office Jan. 1.
