Government Innovation Arizona
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Sessions
Registration & Networking
7:30 AM - 8:30 AM (60 mins)
Foyer
Opening Remarks from PSN
8:30 AM - 8:40 AM (10 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Welcome from the Chair
8:40 AM - 8:50 AM (10 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Arizona’s Delivery System: Moving Faster with Data, Security, and Shared Direction
8:50 AM - 9:10 AM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Arizona is entering a new phase of digital government where speed, coordination, and trust are no longer trade-offs, but expectations.
This session will bring together delivery, data, and cybersecurity leadership so you can align on the operating moves that enable faster outcomes across agencies without weakening trust.
- Align priorities across delivery, data, and security so teams can move faster without creating new risk or fragmentation.
- Clarify decision rights and operating rhythms that reduce delays in approvals, data access, and production release.
- Strengthen the data foundations and interoperability needed to deliver joined-up services and AI-enabled work at scale.
- Embed Zero Trust and resilience practices into the default delivery path so security becomes an enabler of speed.
- Commit to a shared direction for agencies and partners, with clear measures of progress (time saved, reuse, duplication reduction).
From Operational Complexity to Coordinated Action: Unifying Service Delivery Across Arizona Government
9:10 AM - 9:30 AM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Arizona government IT leaders face a difficult mandate: advance AI-enabled modernization while maintaining daily operations across fragmented, legacy systems. Learn how Unified ServiceOps connects operational context, workflows, and governance to reduce manual handoffs, improve cross-department visibility, and create capacity for innovation. See how agencies can apply AI and automation to move work from request to resolution faster and deliver more proactive services for employees and the communities they serve.
From Data to Decisions: Building Data Readiness for AI and Analytics at Scale
9:30 AM - 9:50 AM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Arizona’s ability to deliver AI and analytics outcomes depends on the behind-the-scenes work that makes data usable: cataloging, profiling, and quality measurement.
Find out what data readiness looks like at the main enterprise services agency in practice, including the process and tools needed. Discover the frameworks, resources, and architecture that empower data teams to drive better outcomes across the enterprise for real analytics and AI use cases.
- Establish a repeatable data readiness framework that teams can apply across domains.
- Equip data teams with practical operating rhythms: intake and prioritization, stewardship cadence, and clear “definition of ready” standards for AI and analytics.
- Empower teams with reusable assets teams can pick up quickly to reduce reinvention and speed delivery.
- Translate readiness work into business impact by tying improvements to priority use cases.
- Understand how the architecture supports the work end-to-end, including cataloging/profiling/quality measurement and insight delivery and enablement.
AI Data Readiness in Practice: What Arizona Is Building Today to Enable AI at Scale
9:50 AM - 10:20 AM (30 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Arizona’s AI progress is being shaped by work happening now to make data usable, accessible, and reliable across agencies.
This session will highlight practical readiness moves, so you can apply what’s working to enable scalable, real-world AI applications.
- Assess how agencies are identifying, cataloging, and prioritizing data assets to support AI use cases and decision-making, alongside preparing teams to work with these data assets effectively.
- Advance from visibility to usability by making data easier to access, share, and apply across programs and services, while enabling workforce adoption of new data-driven workflows.
- Improve quality and sustainability by clarifying roles, decision rights, and stewardship cadence across data ownership, supported by leadership alignment and clear expectations for how teams operate.
- Reduce integration friction by aligning shared standards, metadata, and interoperability requirements early, while equipping teams to adapt to more integrated ways of working.
- Strengthen alignment between data teams and operational leaders so insights are used consistently in frontline workflows, with practical measures of value (cycle time, duplication, reuse), and reinforcing consistent adoption of these practices across teams.
Morning Networking Break
10:20 AM - 10:50 AM (30 mins)
Valley of the Sun - DE
Two tracks · 10:50 AM - 12:30 PM · Pick one and follow it
10:50 AM - 11:00 AM (10 mins)
Welcome by Track Chair
10:50 AM - 11:00 AM (10 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Welcome by Track Chair
10:50 AM - 11:00 AM (10 mins)
Valley of the Sun - AB
11:00 AM - 11:20 AM (20 mins) Keynote
Services That Work Today, Ready for Tomorrow: Preparing People and Delivering Better Outcomes Across Arizona
11:00 AM - 11:20 AM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Arizona is improving how services are delivered today while preparing the workforce and the public for what comes next as AI becomes part of everyday operations.
This session will show how you can modernize services with people at the center so you can deliver better outcomes now while building trust before technology scales.
- Improve access by making services simpler and more accessible across channels.
- Advance workforce readiness by equipping teams with skills, tools, and confidence for AI-enabled work.
- Strengthen trust by increasing transparency and clarity as services evolve.
- Optimize adoption by designing services around how people actually engage so change feels natural, not forced.
AI Changes the Threat Model: Are We Securing the Right Things?
11:00 AM - 11:20 AM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - AB
AI reshapes how threats emerge, scale, and propagate across government systems, creating new attack surfaces and adversarial capability.
This session will clarify what you need to secure so you can adopt AI without losing control, visibility, or public trust.
- Assess AI-driven threats such as automated phishing, deepfakes, and adversarial attacks targeting infrastructure and AI systems.
- Reduce risk by protecting data pipelines, training datasets, and models against poisoning, leakage, and extraction.
- Improve governance by embedding risk management and security controls across data, models, and operational deployment.
- Strengthen resilience through continuous monitoring for anomalies, model drift, and emerging threats.
11:20 AM - 11:40 AM (20 mins) Industry Insights
Scaling Clarity Over Chaos for Your AI Transformation
11:20 AM - 11:40 AM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
AI transformations often stall due to a lack of verified context with vital information often living in fragmented, undocumented processes - the invisible infrastructure of the business. With 40% of agentic AI projects at risk due to unclear value, leaders must treat documentation as infrastructure. In this session, you will learn how to scale clarity, transforming institutional knowledge into the trusted and verified logic AI needs to succeed.
When Critical Services Stop: What Ransomware Teaches Us About Operational Resilience
11:20 AM - 11:40 AM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - AB
Ransomware is no longer just an IT problem—it’s an operational resilience challenge. Across state and local governments, cyberattacks have disrupted emergency services, delayed court proceedings, halted permitting, interrupted tax collection, and forced agencies to revert to manual operations for weeks or months.
This session examines real-world ransomware incidents affecting public sector organizations, identifies the common failures that allowed disruptions to spread, and explores what resilient organizations do differently.
- Reducing operational impact.
- Strengthening recovery capabilities.
- Ensuring critical services remain available even when prevention fails.
- How ransomware groups increasingly view election infrastructure and public trust as strategic targets.
11:40 AM - 12:10 PM (30 mins) Panel Discussion
AI Governance: Best Practices for Scalable AI Governance
11:40 AM - 12:10 PM (30 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Arizona is deciding how AI will be controlled, governed, and trusted before it scales across a federated environment.
This session will examine the control-layer choices you can make so you can scale AI as a force multiplier instead of a systemic risk.
- Assess ownership and accountability models for AI risk, decisions, and outcomes across agencies, including where human-in-the-loop review is required.
- Improve enforceability by connecting data inventory and classification to decision control, not just visibility.
- Reduce risk by establishing guardrails for bias management, model transparency, human-in-the-loop escalation, procurement, and auditability before scale.
- Advance operational governance by embedding controls into workflows, systems, and cross-agency collaboration.
Who Owns the Risk? Securing AI Systems Across Data, Models, and Operations
11:40 AM - 12:10 PM (30 mins)
Valley of the Sun - AB
As AI becomes embedded in government systems, responsibility for cyber risk becomes distributed and harder to enforce.
This session will clarify how you can define and operationalize shared responsibility so you can protect AI systems as they scale into real-world operations.
- Assess how responsibility is divided across pipelines, models, infrastructure, and endpoints.
- Reduce exposure by protecting training data, models, and outputs from manipulation, leakage, and unauthorized access.
- Improve enforceability by aligning responsibilities across internal teams and external partners.
- Optimize response by operationalizing continuous monitoring, detection, and rapid incident handling as systems evolve.
12:10 PM - 12:30 PM (20 mins) Industry Insights
The Last Mile Problem: Why Approved AI Projects Struggle to Reach Full Deployment
12:10 PM - 12:30 PM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Securing approval is only the beginning; delivering AI at scale requires navigating integration, adoption, and execution realities.
This session will outline what you can do after funding is secured so you can move from approved initiatives to fully deployed, high-impact solutions.
- Improve deployment by ensuring AI solutions connect with existing systems, data environments, and workflows.
- Strengthen adoption by equipping the workforce with skills, confidence, and in-the-flow support.
- Optimize procurement by structuring approaches for flexibility, iteration, and continuity through scaling.
- Advance sustainability by embedding solutions into daily operations across agencies.
Cybersecurity in the Age of AI: What Every Government Employee Needs to Know
12:10 PM - 12:30 PM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - AB
Cybersecurity in the Age of AI: What Every Government Employee Needs to Know
Artificial intelligence is transforming government operations while also giving adversaries new ways to target people, data and critical systems. This session will explore practical steps public sector organizations can take to strengthen cybersecurity, accelerate incident response and build resilience across cloud, SaaS and on-premises environments.
- Recognize how AI-enabled phishing, impersonation and automated attacks are changing the threat landscape.
- Identify visibility and security gaps that can leave government systems and sensitive data exposed.
- Improve incident response by connecting detection, investigation, automation and recovery.
- Protect critical data while meeting government security and compliance requirements.
- Empower employees with the awareness and practices needed to become an effective first line of defense.
Networking Lunch
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM (60 mins)
Valley of the Sun DE
Choose one · 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM (60 mins) · 2 options
Roundtable Discussions for Government
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM (60 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Roundtable Discussions for Government
Pick your topic. Pull up a seat and join a 45‑minute interactive discussion with your government peers. Facilitated by an industry expert, you’ll share challenges and swap practical approaches within the topic area. Take this opportunity to benchmark what good looks like, pressure-test ideas, and workshop next steps together.
- From Requests to Results: How AI-Powered Workflows Help Arizona Government Move Faster
- Modernizing with Confidence: Reducing Risk as Arizona Scales Digital Services
- Overcoming Data Overload: Delivering Smarter, Faster Citizen Services through Context-Aware AI
- Simplifying Government IT: Modern Endpoint Management for More Resilient Agencies
- Cyber Resilience and Cost Reduction Opportunities for Arizona Government
- Beyond Alert Fatigue: Using AI and Automation to Accelerate Cybersecurity Response
2:15 - 2:30 PM - Knowledge Sharing and Feedback
A quick-fire share-back: We’ll take the mic around the room for the top takeaways from each roundtable, so you can catch the insights from sessions you missed before reconvening for the rest of the conference.
Procurement Session for Vendors: How Arizona Buys: What Government Is Funding Now and What Procurement Teams Look For
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM (60 mins)
Valley of the Sun - DE
Buying patterns in Arizona are shifting as agencies modernize platforms, strengthen cybersecurity, and move from pilots to scalable data and AI capabilities.
This session will break down current buying trends so you can understand what’s being funded, how decisions get made, and what procurement teams need to see to move forward with confidence.
- Assess where spend is concentrating across platforms, cybersecurity, data modernization, analytics, and AI enablement.
- Identify the evaluation signals Arizona procurement teams prioritize (outcomes, risk, interoperability, security posture, and evidence of adoption).
- Clarify what “good” looks like in proposals: measurable value, implementation readiness, and realistic operating models for government.
- Improve alignment by mapping your approach to common buying pathways, contract vehicles, and approval realities across the state.
Modernizing Around the Citizen: Digital Services, AI, and Cross-Agency Collaboration
2:30 PM - 2:50 PM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun C
The Three Mistakes That Stand Between Good Intentions and Great Digital Services
2:50 PM - 3:10 PM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Most poor government digital services don't come from bad intentions—they come from good people working inside complex systems. This session will draw on nearly 30 years of experience to reveal three common mistakes that quietly undermine even the best-funded modernization efforts and that most teams never realize they're making.
Through real-world stories, this session shows how human-centered design helps agencies uncover what people actually need before they build, buy, or automate. The payoff: reduced errors, call volume, and costly post-launch fixes, while building public trust.
Whether you're modernizing a website, working on digital accessibility, or rolling out your first AI use case, you'll leave knowing how to spot these mistakes in your own work, and how to avoid them.
Transforming Citizen Access: Building a Single Front Door for All Arizona State Services
3:10 PM - 3:30 PM (20 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Arizona's residents were navigating separate agency portals, each with its own login, creating real barriers to services people rely on. This session will show you how ADOA-ASET built and launched the A-to-Z Arizona Portal, from cross-agency integration to go-live, so you can apply the delivery model and lessons to your own digital modernization work.
- Consolidate citizen access to state services under one authenticated account without replacing existing agency systems.
- Integrate identity and eligibility platforms across government tiers to remove friction at key service transitions.
- Apply human-centered, mobile-first design principles to reduce barriers and improve service uptake.
- Build cross-agency governance and collaboration into your delivery model from the outset.
- Identify lessons from the A-to-Z rollout that apply to your next digital service program.
Modernizing Cyber Infrastructure: Building a Zero Trust, Threat-Informed Foundation That Can Absorb the Next Wave
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM (30 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Governments are modernizing across hybrid environments at the same time adversaries are industrializing attacks, making resilience a design requirement, not a response plan.
This session will explore a threat-informed, Zero Trust approach to strengthen detection, response, and recovery while you modernize critical systems.
- Assess the highest-risk failure points across identity, endpoints, networks, cloud, and core applications in hybrid environments.
- Reduce exposure by adopting Zero Trust patterns that verify continuously and limit blast radius across users, devices, and workloads.
- Improve detection and response by operationalizing threat intelligence, SOC modernization, and security automation across agencies.
- Strengthen continuity by hardening backup, recovery, and cyber-resilience playbooks for critical services and large-scale disruption scenarios.
Closing Remarks from Chair
4:00 PM - 4:05 PM (5 mins)
Valley of the Sun - C
Networking Reception
4:05 PM - 5:05 PM (60 mins)
Valley of the Sun - DE
