Gretchen Peri has been involved in helping governments around the world find better ways to use technology for more than two decades. For the last 14 years, she led the Global Public & Social Impact practice at Slalom Consulting.
She is now bringing her international experience home to Washington state as the new CTO of Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech).
WaTech was established in 2011 as Washington state’s consolidated technology services agency. Pretty much wherever the state is using technology to deliver services, this agency is involved.
Peri is now working to implement an ambitious new strategic plan that she says is aimed at improving how Washington uses technology to serve residents. Peri is also the opening keynote speaker at the Bellevue Innovation Exchange Oct. 16 at Bellevue City Hall.
GeekWire caught up with Peri to talk about how WaTech plans to use AI, cloud platforms, upgraded online services, and a cultural shift in focus to improve what it offers to state residents — and to do so at a time when state budgets are tight, and federal guidance and regulation around AI and tech is still evolving. The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
GeekWire: What attracted you to this role?
Peri: “I’ve spent the last 20 years of my career in management consulting, helping state and local governments leverage technology to better deliver on their business outcomes. At my previous firm, I led our global government education and nonprofit business. And as exciting as that was, I also found that I was making a small impact in a lot of different places. At this point in my career, I want to have a large impact in one place. That’s what drew me to the state. And I’m so glad I’m here.”
GeekWire: What are your top three priorities as CTO?
Peri: “I’d say my three areas of focus are:
- Putting residents first and at the heart of everything we design and deploy.
- Delivering responsible technology — especially with some of the new and emerging technologies we’re seeing, with guardrails that help our employees make the best decisions possible about how and when to leverage technology in their work.
- Using technology to improve our overall services.
From in line to online, we want to be able to deliver our services where people are, when they need it, and in whatever language they need to receive it in.”
GeekWire: The new 2025 IT strategic plan calls for the development of enterprise standards for emerging technologies, including AI, automation, and cloud platforms, to ensure security, equity, and appropriate use. How big a lift do you think that will be?
Peri: “One of the biggest lifts, I think, is actually cultural. Governments always design their services from how we operate, rather than thinking about how residents and customers actually need to receive our services. So it’s that cultural shift that I think is going to be the most exciting transformation and probably the most work for us as we look to leverage emerging technologies, including AI, in the right way.
Another area where agencies are very interested in using new and emerging technologies is how we expose our enterprise knowledge base — with chatbots and other things that many jurisdictions are deploying right now. We’ve got very rich information but finding that information can be a challenge for our residents. So using our enterprise knowledge base to deliver the information to our residents is another area.
Computer vision is actually one of the really exciting areas, and we’re seeing this as we look to do automated inspections to help keep our employees safe, or monitor the health of our natural environment. There are some really interesting AI use cases around identifying and monitoring the health of fish or different types of eelgrass in the Puget Sound and in our oceans.
There’s also conversational and translational AI. The technology has come to a point now where we are able to provide our content in hundreds of languages. And even in this area, we have groups, we have communities that speak unique languages. And so the advances in technology allow us to reach them and communicate with them much easier than it used to be.
Finally, (there is) agentic workflow. That’s around automating our business operations at scale, starting with things that are straightforward and simple, like invoice matching or other types of things where we can make sure that we’re validating the information, and then we can move on to the task at hand.”
GeekWire: It sounds like one of your biggest challenges might be around siloed information.
Peri: “Our problem is exactly like you said, we have silos within those departments that are managing their data. We actually have silos within law enforcement agencies, where they have their records management system and their dispatch system and their evidence management system. So bringing data together within agencies is our first challenge and then bringing data together from multiple agencies is going to be our second challenge.”
GeekWire: As you’re trying to bring AI to all of this, it’s more challenging if you have to send AI off to a whole bunch of different places.
Peri: “Exactly, and until we bring that data together, can we really identify and track the outcomes we’re looking to generate? We can track outputs, how many people we’re serving with this type of product or service, but we can’t necessarily say that we’re delivering a healthier population or a more resilient population. So that’s the main focus of why we need to bring that data together to create a foundation upon which we can really start to measure those outcomes and move those levers.”
GeekWire: Federal guidance and regulations on AI and tech are still evolving. How do you plan to navigate uncertainty and evolution at the national level?
Peri: “I am still only one month in. (But it’s about) leveraging the federal standards that have been in place for quite some time and making sure that we are providing our guidelines and regulations that match the culture of Washington and (how) we want to create a welcoming environment for everyone in this state. And that’s about all I can say on the federal state discussion.”
GeekWire: Do the state’s current budget challenges change what you need to do in the IT strategic plan?
Peri: “I think that in this budget constrained environment, it’s even more important that we rely on our technology to be able to reach people who really need it right now and deliver services more digitally so that they can access them easier.”
GeekWire: If there’s one thing you’d like Washington residents to be able to say a year from now about the services offered by WaTech, what would it be?
Peri: “I think of the quote: ‘I expect exceptional, but I’ll settle for awesome’. When I look back, I want to be able to say that across the board when we get to interact with people at pivotal points in their lives, which we do as government, that we have provided exceptional customer service to them.”
