His thoughts on the speed of change, phishing, fishing and more
With more than 30 years in information technology, Brandon Jackson works in a world of constant change. IT’s never-ending evolution affects more than the tangible products, like hardware and software. He says the biggest changes he’s observed are in delivery time and expectations.
“My kids grew up with the internet always being there, and that influences their expectations of society and the world around them,” Jackson says. “They’ve been able to get everything at a snap of the finger. Technology has improved and has been able to provide that, to a degree. And human expectation is expecting a faster delivery.”
Jackson says the rate of change in technology has always been fast. A few decades ago, improvements in hardware fueled the faster speeds. Today it’s an acceleration of what the applications are capable of. And society’s evolving expectations keep demanding that technology deliver even greater speed, compatibility and efficiency.
Many of the City’s basic services don’t change much from year to year. But how we deliver those services keeps changing, often because of technology. “Technology is one of the drivers that allows the City to provide those services and adapt to the continuous changes in the types of services and customer expectations,” Jackson says.
Years of tech and management experience
Jackson became the City’s Chief Information Officer and head of the Technology Services Department on March 1, when Beverly Bieker retired. He had been the department’s assistant director and has worked for the City for almost four years. He was Gaston County’s CIO from 2004 to 2014. His more than three decades in information technology include 12 years in the public sector and 19 years in the private sector, from tiny startups to a Fortune 100 company.
He has been in management for about 25 years, and Jackson says that sparked a keen interest in learning about different social styles and personalities. “Early in my career, I thought that was all psychobabble,” he says. But a mentor helped him realize that successful leaders are those who learn to interact well with other people. Personality assessments like Myers-Briggs, Enneagram and DiSC helped him to better understand himself and others. “My personality was so strong early in my career that it got in my way,” he says. “I had to figure it out. And I had to figure out other people’s personalities so that I could adapt better.”
Jackson met his wife, Becky, while both were in the Air Force, and they’ve been married 31 years. They have two adult children. Their daughter, Tori, is married and is an accountant in Columbus, Ohio. Their son, Curtis, is engaged and will graduate this spring from N.C. State University with an engineering degree.
Phishing and other cybersecurity challenges
The City’s heavy reliance on technology to provide a wide range of services means we are vulnerable to hackers. Jackson says today’s cybercriminals are organized, highly skilled and often paid by foreign governments or other state-sponsored organizations overseas. And they are relentless.
He says the City’s technology infrastructure is attacked on a “minute-by-minute basis.” As you read this article, our outer systems and firewalls are stopping at least a dozen attempts to penetrate the City’s systems. But Jackson says we are always vulnerable. “All it takes is one user to click the wrong link, and we are compromised,” he says. “It’s a question of when, not if.”
He describes recent hacking attempts that did not compromise the City but prompted Technology Services to conduct inventories and audits to analyze what happened. “Regardless of how hard you work at it, we can’t compete with international cybercrime,” he says. The constant threat means the City must allocate more staff time and money to cybersecurity. According to Jackson, the City must prepare the best that it can to prevent cyberattacks and know how to react and recover quickly when one does happen.
Fishing and catching more fish
Jackson says the technology that City employees use every day – especially the business applications – belong to the users. Not to Technology Services. “We’re the custodians. We manage security. We are the advisers and the consultants,” he says of his department. One of his goals is to empower City employees to take greater ownership of both their business problems and the technology solutions to those problems.
You know the old adage about catching fish for someone and feeding them for a day, or teaching them to fish and feeding them for a lifetime? He says sometimes Technology Services must catch and cook the “fish” – or identify and operate the technology solutions. But in many cases, City employees can be the ones doing the fishing. “There are 28 of us,” he says of Technology Services Department employees. “We can definitely fish for you. But if we don’t help you learn how to fish, we can only catch 28 fish at a time. If we educate you, the City can catch more fish and be a lot more productive.”
Technology’s role in change management
For Jackson, the greatest joy on the job is solving problems. One recent example is the successful software transition from Hansen to CityView for City planning, permitting and development. “One of my motivators is the accomplishment of rolling out an improvement,” he says. Also rewarding is something as small as adjusting a law enforcement officer’s radio to get rid of annoying static. “It’s seeing the smiles on users’ faces and their satisfaction,” he says.
Whether it’s a large launch or a tiny tweak, change is a constant at Technology Services – and in City service delivery. And Jackson sees a direct connection between technology project management and change management. “If you think about what information technology is, it’s constant flux and constant change,” he says. “So project management is something that I will want to put a little more emphasis on in Technology Services.”
What he does not want to change is the service-oriented culture of Technology Services. Department employees will continue to serve as advisers, consultants, custodians of technology systems, and “fishing teachers.” And they will continue efforts to protect the City’s technology from sophisticated and seemingly unrelenting cyberattacks. “We are here for you,” he says. That constant is reassuring, especially in a world where technology and expectations keep changing at breakneck speed.