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Montana moves ahead on IT centralization, hires chief AI officer and pilots Microsoft Copilot
Summary
State IT officials told the Information Technology Planning Council they are progressing through a three‑phase centralization of executive‑branch IT, have hired a chief AI officer, and are piloting Microsoft Copilot for branch staff while asking that House Bill 10 proposals be submitted for April review.
The Information Technology Planning Council heard a status update from Kevin Gilbertson of the State Information Technology Services Division on the administration's IT centralization and emerging AI work.
Gilbertson said the centralization effort began after an executive order issued in July and is proceeding as a three‑phase project (discovery, planning, execution). "This is a 3 phase project where the first phase is discovery, and the second play phase is planning," he said, adding that execution is not planned to start until April so staff and stakeholders "have an understanding of where things are going." He said an outside vendor has analyzed executive‑branch organization, tools and technologies and that materials are available at centralization.mt.gov.
Why it matters: the reorganization aims to consolidate HR, procurement and IT functions across the executive branch, increase security and standardize project prioritization for initiatives that affect legislators and legislative staff.
Gilbertson highlighted security work and system modernization, saying the branch is "implementing Google SecOps" and moving some Avaya data into Snowflake as part of infrastructure improvements. He also announced the hire of a chief AI officer, identifying him by name: "His name is Chris Terabocha, by the way." Gilbertson outlined that the chief AI officer's responsibilities include raising AI literacy for state employees, building a sandbox environment for safe AI experimentation and coordinating pilot automation projects with agencies.
On practical uses for AI, Gilbertson described pilots to assist agency workloads, including exploring tools to help with high‑volume, repetitive tasks. As one example, he said the AI team is working with the secretary of state's office on automated checks for ballots prior to final manual review so human reviewers start from a higher‑confidence baseline.
Project priorities and the budget process were discussed. Gilbertson said staff are preparing for House Bill 10 and have implemented a return‑on‑investment methodology to make project prioritization more visible. "We ask that House Bill 10 projects, from our perspective, be submitted to us ... and then we need to review that with OPPP in April," he said.
On Microsoft Copilot, Skye Foster (Acting CIO) told the council the branch is piloting Copilot with ledger finance and planned ledger audit pilots. Foster cautioned the project required more scoping than initially expected and that, for now, the branch does not plan to make Copilot generally available to legislators without additional direction: "At this point, I'd rather keep it at staff, and we can work with legislators later."
Next steps: staff will continue planning work through April, firm up organizational design for the centralized IT structure, complete security policy development and bring HB10 project packages through the April review process for budget consideration.
Speakers quoted in this article are drawn from the meeting record of the Information Technology Planning Council.
