From Bill Cutshall, Founder and Head of Technology:
Yesterday, I attended Government Technology’s 2026 State of Technology Texas Industry Forum, and one thing came through clearly: running technology for the State of Texas is an increasingly difficult balancing act.
We heard directly from technology leaders across state and local government, including the Texas Department of Information Resources, Texas Cyber Command, City of Austin, Office of the Texas Attorney General, Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Workforce Commission, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, and Texas Department of Public Safety.
Seven things I took away:
1. The people leading government technology in Texas know exactly how complicated the job has become.
They are balancing security, modernization, citizen expectations, budgets, legacy systems and rapidly changing technology, often all at once.
2. Technology remains as much a human challenge as a technical one.
Adoption, behavior, process, and organizational readiness matter as much as the technology itself.
3. When it comes to security, natural stupidity is still as dangerous as artificial intelligence.
New technology creates new risks, but many vulnerabilities still come back to very human decisions.
4. AI is moving faster than policy.
Capabilities are developing faster than the guardrails, governance models, and best practices needed to implement them responsibly. That is especially challenging for public organizations where the tolerance for risk should be low.
5. AI is also moving faster than traditional budgeting.
Major functional improvements can appear several times within a single budget cycle, making it difficult for agencies to predict, fund and justify the cost of keeping pace.
6. AI is being added to seemingly every technology product while licensing costs continue to climb.
When organizations pay more for functionality they may not need, be ready to use, or already pay for through a different product, those increases can feel arbitrary rather than valuable.
7. The newest technology is not always the answer.
The attention surrounding AI and other emerging tools can sometimes distract organizations from simpler improvements to business processes or traditional automation tools that could solve the problem more effectively.
For those of us who build enterprise digital platforms for government, that last point is particularly important. Modernization should not be about adding technology for technology’s sake. It should make government easier to manage, easier to secure and, ultimately, easier for Texans to use.
Thank you to the public servants who took time away from very demanding jobs to talk candidly about the challenges they are working through every day.
