Dan Cronin this week started work as the state’s technology leader, according to Christa Helfrey, public information manager for the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES).
His first day was Jan. 6.
Cronin was most recently global vice president of engineering for Marriott International, according to his LinkedIn profile.
His duties for the hotel operator included “end-to end accountability for Public Clouds, Software and Product Engineering, Platform and Infrastructure Engineering, FinOps and Cost Optimization, Data Centers and Migrations, and Enterprise Observability,” he wrote.
Cronin could not be reached for immediate comment.
Cronin takes over a job whose previous permanent holder resigned after a self-described “ethics violation.”
Joe McIntosh, the CIO since July 2023, stepped down in October after reaching an agreement with state ethics authorities over a contracting complaint that apparently involved his family. McIntosh said he self-reported the issue, which resulted in a $2,500 civil penalty but allowed him to stay on.
He said at the time that his decision to leave the CIO position was a personal decision “unrelated to the ethics matter.”
Cronin’s tech experience stretches back to at least 1998, when he worked as a support engineer for Microsoft. Since then he has supervised cloud services for TRW Automotive, and worked as senior director of engineering for Allstate.
During his more than four years with the insurance company, he helped lead “multiple teams consisting of 150 leaders and engineers with agile and outcome-based deliverables,” according to his LinkedIn profile, along with reducing “tech debt” by 40 percent via “consolidation and product integration.”
Cronin “successfully steered engineering teams to optimize costs, implement automation and foster innovation, contributing to measurable organizational outcomes and efficiency,” according to a biography of Cronin on the OMES website. “His expertise spans strategy, execution, continuous improvement and governance, underscored by a keen focus on delivering technology-driven results.”
Like his peers in other states, Cronin will face the challenge of artificial intelligence as the state continues to train its employees how to use the quickly spreading technology.
Last January, Gov. Kevin Stitt called for AI “to help us steward taxpayer dollars more responsibly by cutting redundant government positions” — another issue the state’s new CIO seems likely to deal with.
