Fri, 20 Sep 2002 22:04:38 GMT

Biographical Information

Al Sherwood is the Deputy Chief Information Officer for the State of Utah and serves on the CIO leadership team that helped implement Utah Governor Michael Leavitt's and now Governor Olene Walker's vision for Utah’s Digital Government initiatives. During Al's tenure as State Electronic Commerce Coordinator and Acting CIO, Utah moved from 35th ranking to 5th in the nation, in the Digital State Survey sponsored by the Center For Digital Government and the Progress and Freedom Foundation. He serves concurrently as the state’s Chief Privacy Officer and authored the state’s first privacy policy.

Al was one of the original architects of Utah's E-government strategy when he served as the state’s electronic commerce coordinator. He worked with the CIO and Governor to create the Utah Electronic Commerce Council bringing about the coordinated delivery of Internet-based citizen to government and business to government services, and served as its chair from 1999-2002. Al oversees the development of the national award winning utah.gov portal. He also worked closely with agency leaders to develop Utah's enterprise egovernment projects including the utah.gov business portal based on a business "life cycle" approach and other projects such as the redesign of Utah's public assistance eligibility systems eRep, and a multi-agency, and the multi-jurisdictional project called the “One-stop Business Registration System.” OSBR is a national model for integrating multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional business processes. It streamlines business registration while allowing for a secure 24X7 online service. During Al's service over 100 egovernment applications have been brought online.

In 2002 Al received a national recognition award from Government Technology Magazine: GT Top 25, Doers, Dreamers and Drivers of Information Technology in Government. He shared this honor with Governor Mike Leavitt. Utah was the only example of a state honored with two award winners.

In 2003 utah.gov received one of the nation's highest honors by being awarded first place as the best state web portal in the Center For Digital Government's Best of the Web competition. In 2004, three projects that Al was closely involved in received awards from three different entities. The Center For Digital Government awarded Utah second place for the utah.gov business portal. Brown University awarded Utah a third place finish in an independent survey of state e-government initiatives. Utah's “One-stop Business Registration System” was awarded second place the the National Association of Chief Information Officer's (NASCIO) for the outstanding business to government category.

Al serves or has served on various boards and committees including the Utah Health Information Network, Utah Tech Corps. Board, the Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center (DBTAC) Utah Advisory Board, the Governance Board for the enterprise eligibility system known as eREP, and the Utah Educational Network Board. In 2004 Al served as a national judge for the annual city, county and state "Best of the Web Competitiion."

Al's career spans twenty-six years of public service and has been with the Governor’s Office since, February 1998. Previously, Al was an information technology planner, researcher and deputy director within the Utah Department of Human Services.

Al Sherwood: BIO