Gregory Yamamoto/Gregory Yamamoto
A California native, Murdock said he lived all over the country during 25 years in the Air Force before retiring to Hawaii in 2010. He spent most of his service as a JAG (Judge Advocate General's Corps), or lawyer, often working with legal information technology as a programmer and user of business applications. This included two years at an Air Force legal information center developing websites, document management programs and user requirements for various business applications; five years in the Pentagon, working with IT issues and procurement in particular; and work for the Air Force’s now-inactive Electronic Systems Center in Massachusetts, while it was buying about $5 billion of equipment and software for the Air Force and other Department of Defense agencies.
According to a news release, following his military service Murdock worked at a private law firm in Honolulu called Alston Hunt Floyd and Ing. He has since worked for the state of Hawaii for almost five years as state comptroller and director of the Department of Accounting and General Services, and as vice president of administrative and fiscal affairs for the Hawaii Tourism Authority.
Murdock has a bachelor’s degree in economics, a master’s degree in public administration and a Juris Doctor from the University of Washington.
His appointment as CIO of Hawaii’s Office of Enterprise Technology Services is subject to Senate confirmation.
“Doug has an outstanding grasp of the challenges and opportunities associated with transitioning state government to secure, efficient IT systems,” said Gov. Ige in a statement. “We are dedicating significant resources to this task, and I’m confident that he will work with all stakeholders to develop sound solutions.”
As comptroller, Murdock said he started implementing a new statewide enterprise resource planning system, including a project to replace the state’s payroll application and upgrade its human resources management system. One of his priorities as CIO will be implementing the remainder of the ERP, which he expects could take about five years.
“My priority is to see the ERP through to its completion with the next phase of payroll, which is the time and attendance and leave management, and to get the budget and accounting, fiscal part completed,” he said. “We’re running some legacy systems that are 40 or 50 years old on our financials, so we really need to upgrade.”
Murdock praised his predecessor’s work in spearheading Hawaii’s award-winning Web portal and state department dashboard, among other things, and said he’s on the same page with Gov. Ige in prioritizing ways to make government more open and efficient for citizens and businesses.
“I don’t feel too bad about where we are right now. We have a good trend going of implementing successful systems under Todd Nacapuy, the previous CIO, and our really good digital workforce. We’ve been able to accomplish a lot,” Murdock said. “We have some legacy systems still to deal with, and we have everyday problems, but I do believe we’re on the right track, and we just have to keep the momentum up.”
