DENVER – Winners of the 2024 StateScoop 50 Awards have been announced, and the Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) was honored in three categories. Brandy Reitter, Executive Director of the Colorado Broadband Office, won GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year for her leadership in expanding broadband accessibility statewide and Josh Coultas, IT Director, won State Leadership of the Year for his work in streamlining processes. Additionally, OIT received the State Innovation of the Year award for its Broadband One-Stop Shop Grant Portal, which provides an efficient and user-friendly experience for broadband grant applicants and awardees.
Chief Information Officer & Executive Director David Edinger says, “Our team strives to ensure that the state's technology works for all Coloradans and makes a positive difference in the lives of those who use state services. I’m grateful that public sector technologists across the nation selected our people and our work for these honors.”
The StateScoop 50 Awards annually honor the best and the brightest who make state government more efficient and effective. These awards celebrate the outstanding achievements of our peers and acknowledge their tireless efforts to make a positive impact in the government IT community and in public service.
Awards were presented Sunday evening during a StateScoop reception ceremony held at the annual NASCIO 2024 Midyear Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.
Brandy Reitter, GoldenGov: State Executive of the Year
Brandy is a visionary leader who has propelled the Colorado Broadband Office's programs, expanding broadband accessibility statewide. Under her guidance, innovative initiatives have enhanced state government efficiency, ensuring that unserved and underserved communities benefit from improved connectivity. Brandy's commitment to bridging the digital divide and advancing technological solutions reflects a profound dedication to making state agencies more effective and responsive to community needs. Her impact on Colorado's broadband landscape exemplifies the excellence recognized by this award, making her a standout nominee.
Josh Coultas, State Leadership of the Year
Josh has transformed and standardized our software review and approval processes, streamlining the effort to be quick and customer friendly. This flow will be the foundation for future solicitation reviews and approvals along with many IT purchases. We call this BuyIT, and it moves decision making as early in the process as possible based upon a reuse, repurpose, or configure existing solutions philosophy to provide comparable business capability solutions to our customers. In parallel to these efforts, Josh continually defined the overall customer intake scheme while implementing innovative business process changes. Josh brings his consulting, presales, and customer service skills to bear serving our agencies and ensuring that we are a positive force for change and not a roadblock to success. We want to reduce customer effort to provide IT at the speed of business, and Josh is a key to creating this new world.
Broadband One-Stop Shop Grant Portal, State IT Innovation of the Year
The Advance Colorado Broadband Grant Portal is a one-stop-shop grants management and compliance portal for all programs under the Colorado Broadband Office within OIT. The $1M project budget will result in technological innovations, including migrating $91M in historical broadband grant application data from the Broadband Deployment Fund, making it electronically available to grantees in the program. The Broadband Deployment Fund includes $20M in grant funding annually. The project supports the implementation of $113.5M in grant awards from the Capital Projects Fund, improving workflow, communication, documentation and compliance for the grant program. The technological innovation also includes managing the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, totaling $826.5M in historic broadband investments across 180K serviceable locations in Colorado. The project not only modernizes how Colorado manages robust historic broadband funding but also supports an efficient, user-friendly process for applicants. It will deliver cutting-edge broadband data analytics resulting in government transparency and improve customer service for industry, local governments, Tribes, nonprofits, utility providers, trade associations, federal partners, state agencies and community anchor institutions.