Dr. Matthew McCarville, the State Chief Information Officer for Nebraska, brings a rare dual-lens perspective — having served both as Chief Data Officer (CDO) and Chief Information Officer across multiple state and university systems. In the first part of this three-part interview series with Adita Karkera, CDO for Deloitte’s Government and Public Services, McCarville reflects on his unconventional path to the top of Nebraska’s IT leadership, the strategic interplay between data and technology, and the vital role of clean, actionable data in driving public sector modernization.

A nonlinear career rooted in adaptability

McCarville’s career journey is far from traditional. “I did not start in IT,” he says. With an academic background in finance and an early role in investment management, the 2008 housing crisis catalyzed a major pivot.

Turning adversity into opportunity, he pursued multiple master’s degrees in BI, software development, and project management, and eventually a doctorate in applied AI and business intelligence analytics.

This academic and technical foundation enabled McCarville to shift into data-driven roles across sectors — from Union Pacific Railroad’s IoT-enabled fuel analytics and predictive intelligence to a groundbreaking stint as Chief Data Scientist for PricewaterhouseCoopers, focusing on human capital metrics.

His move to the University of Florida as both CDO and professor marked his entry into the public sector. When Florida created its first state CDO role, McCarville stepped in just before the COVID-19 pandemic — and found himself also acting as Interim CIO and CISO amid a statewide crisis response.

Data-driven governance in action

McCarville recounts that during COVID, “…we bailed out the unemployment process using RPA, data analytics, and automation.” With rapidly evolving needs in health, education, and employment, the state was measuring things that were never measured before. From dashboarding to metadata management and statewide data catalogs, McCarville’s efforts helped centralize fragmented agency data into a usable analytics platform for real-time decisions.

In 2023, McCarville transitioned to his current role as State CIO of Nebraska, where his data background became his biggest asset. “What I do — modernization, reengineering, using data analytics and data as an asset — is exactly what the governor was looking for.” He was brought in to lead Nebraska’s transformation from legacy IT and mainframe systems toward a modern, scalable, data-driven future.

The CDO-CIO collaboration dilemma

Having worn both hats, McCarville offers valuable insight into the often-discussed dynamic between CDOs and CIOs. “You can’t analyze and improve things that you’re not measuring,” he says, quoting Nebraska’s governor. “And in order to measure things, you need data.”

In Nebraska’s fully charged-back IT model, where the state does not receive direct general fund appropriations, every IT service, from cybersecurity to AI, must be paid for by agencies via internal rate cards. This adds urgency to understanding the true impact of data initiatives.

“We now have to use data as an asset to figure out how we scale up in the most impactful way,” says McCarville. Data, therefore, becomes the foundation for every IT decision. “Everything hinges on the data,” he emphasizes.

Cloud migration realities: Clean data or costly chaos

As part of Nebraska’s modernization, McCarville discusses the shift from on-prem mainframes to multi-cloud ecosystems using containerization. But the journey is not without surprises.

“We found out that you can’t really do AI on the mainframe. It may not be impossible, but it is definitely not affordable.” Once in the cloud, cost creep sets in, especially when old, irrelevant data is migrated without proper curation. “We were putting in logs all the way back to 1995 that we didn’t necessarily need.”

This reiterates a core principle: Data must be treated as a strategic asset, not just a byproduct of operations. Concluding, McCarville says, “The irony is that data kind of flows across everything. The key to understanding how we modernize is really looking at that data and ensuring that data’s clean.”

CDO Magazine appreciates Matthew McCarville for sharing his insights with our global community.