The Tech Mindset Every Governor Needs to Hear, From California's Former CIO Amy Tong | 13th & Park

Amy Tong, former California Chief Information Officer and Secretary of Government Operations, and now a Partner with Ballard Partners and Chair of the Emerging Tech and AI Policy Group, joins Adam Goodman and co-host Anthony Williams at Ballard Studios in Washington, DC for a wide-ranging conversation on what it actually takes to modernize government from the inside. Tong arrived in the United States in 1986 as a 12-year-old, landing at San Francisco International Airport with her family and 8 suitcases after her parents, both college professors in China, decided the American university system offered opportunities that simply did not exist back home. That immigrant drive runs through everything she has done since, including a 31-year career spanning 6 state agencies and 5 governors, from the mainframe era all the way through the AI revolution.

Tong breaks down the digital transformation of California government, from the early days when technology was seen as a back-office function to today's expectation that citizens should be able to renew a driver's license as easily as they order something on Amazon. She shares how the COVID-19 pandemic became an unlikely catalyst for breakthrough change, forcing state leaders to rethink how government communicates and delivers services in real time, when the old playbook no longer applied and the public was watching every move online.

The conversation turns to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, two areas Tong describes as inseparable in the current threat environment. She helped create California's Cybersecurity Integration Center under Governor Jerry Brown and later led implementation of the nation's first statewide executive order governing generative AI in state government under Governor Gavin Newsom. Her message is direct: complacency is no longer an option, and any government that does not put digital service delivery at the center of its mission is not one decade behind, it is multiple decades behind.

Now advising private-sector clients through Ballard Partners, Tong offers a rare insider view on what technology companies consistently get wrong when trying to work with government. Relationships built on genuine understanding of an agency's mission matter far more than a polished pitch, and the companies that invest in that long-term trust are the ones that win when contract opportunities finally arrive. It is a lesson rooted in decades of watching both sides of that equation up close.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:39 Welcome and Guest Introduction
2:00 8 Suitcases: Coming to America in 1986
3:46 From Mainframes to Mobile Government
5:42 Public Expectations of Digital Services
7:18 COVID-19 as a Digital Turning Point
12:13 Building California's Cybersecurity Center
14:41 AI for Good: California's Executive Order
16:15 Working Across 5 Governors
18:19 Advice for Incoming Governors on Tech
19:05 What Private Sector Gets Wrong About Government
22:10 Reflecting on Family and Sacrifice
23:57 Silicon Valley's Entrepreneurship Mindset
25:06 Schwarzenegger Stories and Bipartisan Tech
28:05 Closing Thoughts on Innovation and Curiosity

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