Cybersecurity, Shared Services Among Montana’s 5 Focus Areas

Montana CIO Tim Bottenfield has been on the job for nearly a year, and in that time he’s established a foundation for the State Information Technology Services Division (SITSD) that’s grounded in five main areas: fiscal responsibility, shared services, cybersecurity, digital government for citizens and a service-first mindset.

At the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) Midyear conference earlier this month, Bottenfield said that in the most recent legislative session, he’s gotten support for a number of his initiatives, particularly cybersecurity. Coming into the state CIO role, he said, his biggest concern was around staffing for cyber since SITSD didn’t have the manpower or funding to make use of all the tools that were potentially available to them to protect Montana’s systems.

Bottenfield took advantage of the 2019 legislative session to request additional funding for cyber, which will add around 10 full-time employees to the security team over the next two years, effectively doubling their current numbers.