Sarah Trimble-Oliver, CIO at Cincinnati Public Schools

Do you view business as a customer or a partner of IT?

“We subscribe to an IT consultancy company called InfoTech and they have tons of online resources that we have access to as well as guided implementations of anything under the umbrella of IT. Recently they did a workshop with our IT Leadership Team and what came out of that, and what we’re really proud of here at CPS, is that we’re not just reactive, keeping the servers running and the network running as if that’s all we need to do, but we are able to partner with our business units to determine what they’re asking for and even more, we are leading. We’re seeking out the opportunities and bringing them to the business units with ideas about what they can solve. It’s a little unusual for it to be coming from IT, but we’re saying, with this particular technology, we could give 500 more kids access to these AP course - here’s an opportunity, technology makes it possible, what do you think?”