David Kidd/Government Technology
This push — which comes ahead of Dedmon’s planned retirement in July — began in May 2024 with the passage of House Bill 2325, which established the Tennessee AI Advisory Council. The council oversees four active committees dedicated to AI policies, workforce impacts, and education. It's required to report its progress to the Legislature on specific dates.
“It’s about more than just how we implement AI in our state,” Dedmon said. “It’s about what the policies are that we need or have in place, what the implications to the state workforce are, and what the implications are for education as well.”
There are currently around 12 or 13 AI use cases in varying stages of early planning, development or implementation, according to Dedmon. One is at the state’s Medicaid agency, which is using AI to streamline policy analysis and support call center staff handling Medicaid eligibility inquiries. Tennessee has implemented two policies around AI addressing data use.
“One is around artificial intelligence in general and one is specific to GenAI just to give our workforce direction and guardrails on the effective and safe use of the technology,” Dedmon said. “The policies outline what is appropriate using state-owned equipment to protect our data.”
The state also hosted an AI Partner Experience Day at the end of last year to expand education on, and exploration of, AI’s potential. It featured 23 vendor partners and attracted more than 300 attendees.
“The audience was essentially our state workforce agency leaders there to gain education on the benefits of AI, the possibilities, and immerse themselves in thinking about where AI could be valuable in their agencies,” Dedmon said. “That’s where we are on AI.”
Tennessee has been tackling ambitious modernization projects, another key priority, with updates to the unemployment insurance system, offender management system, and child welfare system during the past year.
Dedmon noted that the unemployment insurance system’s claims side successfully went live last February, and the second, employer tax side of the system, is progressing. The offender management system and the child welfare system modernization projects have anticipated go-live dates of late summer or fall 2026.
The public-facing MyTN app continues to evolve as a central component of the state’s overall digital strategy. New services have been added quarterly to the application, Dedmon said, including an alcohol server permit request option, and real-time wait time information for driver service centers. The app now boasts more than 300,000 users, she said.
Intergovernmental partnerships have been instrumental in assisting with state cybersecurity efforts to protect digital systems. Two major resources shaping these efforts are the National Cybersecurity Review Assessment — an annual self-assessment designed to measure the cybersecurity capabilities and gaps within state and local government organizations — and federal infrastructure grants for state and local governments.
“We are progressing through almost 1,300 entities to do the [National Cybersecurity Review] assessment,” Dedmon said. “We've already started analyzing the results of those assessments to uncover where we have themes of weakness within our local cities and counties, so that we can then come back with a plan of action.”
Additionally, the federal infrastructure grant has led to the creation of initiatives such as endpoint detection and response, cybersecurity awareness training, and other tailored security projects. Tennessee’s “march to the cloud,” the CIO said, remains a key initiative.
“We’ve made enough progress at this point to where it really feels like our goal is moving 100 percent to the cloud and very little would be on premises,” she said.
Another focus is accessibility, driven by updated federal requirements released last year for public-facing websites, mobile apps, and documents. Officials have some tools already but are looking at methods to help them assess where opportunities to improve might be, Dedmon said, describing the effort as “a huge lift,” with remediation required by April 2026.
As her retirement looms, Dedmon said her biggest achievements revolve around collaboration and consolidation.
“When I first began working with the state decades ago, I came to implement a single [enterprise resource planning] ERP solution that would replace eight or nine major applications that were all mostly mainframe-based,” she said. “We did that pretty much on time and on budget. That was in 2008. Additionally, around 2014 or 2015, we consolidated 20 of the 23 executive branch agency teams into [Strategic Technology Solutions] STS. Those were both huge efforts that required partnerships and relationships.”
As the state looks to build on Dedmon's progress and select its next technology leader, she revealed that a nationwide search is already underway, with interviews set to begin as early as the week after next. The goal is to have the new leader in place by March or April, allowing for a two- or three-month transition period.
Dedmon’s plans for retirement are to become “a renewed golfer,” to spend time with her family, traveling, and volunteering.
She leaves the new CIO with these words for success in their new role: “Build relationships with the agency leadership so they know who you are, what your vision is, what you care about, and how committed you are to helping them.”
