Samuel Nixon keeps a folder on his desk from his time as a state legislator. That folder contains all of the plans for what would become the Virginia Information Technologies Agency — an agency that he has led for almost five years as chief information officer.
“It’s been an interesting week,” Nixon told StateScoop in an exclusive interview just days before he leaves his office for the last time this Friday. “It’s been a good five years, and I will greatly miss all of the folks here. It’s just time to see some new opportunities, so that’s what I’m doing.”
Nixon’s next move takes him in a somewhat different direction, as the new chief administrative officer at the Virginia State Corporation Commission, a regulatory agency in state government that keeps tabs on limited liability partnerships and corporations within the state.
From his time as a state legislator, where he worked to establish VITA, Nixon said that he and his team accomplished everything they had set out to do at the inception of the agency.
“It was darn hard along the way,” Nixon said. “[What we did] was very, very disruptive, but there’s no question in my mind that the citizens of Virginia are better off because we pursued this very difficult and challenging task.”
According to Nixon, building out a consolidated shared service environment, bringing the agency to a better financial footing and moving the agency to the new, more digital age of IT, are among the greatest accomplishments during his time as CIO.
