The City Council appointed Posner to the role leading Information Management Services (IMS) in February — taking over from Aaron Bentley, who left to join Utah state government as deputy director of agency services. The city created an innovation department in 2021, and has become known as the “Silicon Slopes” for its growing concentration of technology companies.
“My job is to enable people to have and exercise great ideas,” Posner said, noting that great ideas do not always come from the top.
Posner’s key priorities in his role as CIO for the city are governance, service delivery and AI, he said. These do intersect, as improved governance can support responsible AI implementation, which can, in turn, lead to improved processes for government service delivery.
A lack of AI governance can sometimes cause local governments to steer clear of the technology, Posner said, but he called data and AI “critical to the future.” A lot of the technology’s potential is in its ability to impact end users, and there are use cases that can deliver quick wins, Posner said, such as chatbots or natural language processing for call routing. There are also ways technology can help officials prioritize resource allocation for better service delivery by using predictive analytics to more proactively identify issues, such as potholes.
The city has already used AI to improve its homelessness response processes. Supporting people who are unhoused has been a primary concern for the city’s mayor, Erin Mendenhall, who launched Project CONNECT to better support the city’s 50 most-arrested individuals using city, county and state resources. Since its start, 60 percent of those people have been arrested less, the mayor has said.
This, Posner said, is an example of the connection between data and resident relationships, helping the city distribute resources precisely where they are needed rather than painting different residents “with the same broad brush.”
Public-sector organizations sometimes operate through a fear-based approach, the CIO said, with the fear of failure — or an audit or policy violation — potentially stalling progress. His goal is to create a culture of continuous learning in IMS to empower new ideas for innovation.
“How do we move a model that is about employee enablement so that we can better serve residents?” Posner said.
The solution, he said, is to take a risk-based approach rather than one based on compliance. Having accountability structures in place allows for innovation, and sometimes, mistakes. If government is expected to deliver on time and on budget all the time, progress can languish: “Often, the fear of failure against that is actually the cause of the failure itself.”
Posner’s more than eight years’ experience as Salt Lake County’s CIO helped prepare him to be city CIO, as he was able to learn how area government operates and build relationships in regional organizations that can support his work.
During his time with the county, he said his key achievements were related to building a team and governance. A collaborative approach to innovation drove that work, he said, so that people across county government felt like the IT team was “doing things with them,” rather than to them: “That’s a muscle we really need to exercise here at the city.”
Being in a city position that is responsible for supporting other teams’ needs comes back to governance and customer service, Posner said. Focusing on the end user allows the city government, supported by IMS, to find opportunities to improve services.
Looking back at his time with Salt Lake County, Posner said that by the end of his tenure as CIO, the previously siloed IT team was working collectively toward common goals.
“I loved my time in the county; it was an amazing organization,” Posner said, emphasizing that the chance to more directly impact residents via service-oriented work led him to his new role with Salt Lake City, where he has the advantage of seeing “opportunities for change.”
