A new face has joined the staff at Belmont Town Hall.
Chris McClure was hired this summer to serve as the town’s first chief innovation officer, a new role that will oversee the town’s Information Technology (IT) Department. His first day was Monday, Aug. 12.
“I plan on meeting — and I’ve started — with all of the departments as part of my tour of [Belmont], doing needs assessments: what’s working, what’s not working; [finding out] what their goals are, and getting a good sense of what we have. Are there rooms for consolidations, is there room for savings?”
McClure comes most recently from Watertown, where he served as the town’s chief information officer. His career started in the nonprofit sector, working to address homelessness, before transitioning into technology, which started with his role at a cable access station.
“I was working quite a bit on bridging the digital divide efforts in the 90s,” he said.
From there, he went on to work in the technology sector in several communities, including Norfolk, Westford, and Hopkinton.
“I think in IT you really have to keep moving to keep on top of the changing landscape,” he said. “In that time, I’ve obviously focused on innovation, trying to transform local government. My focus has always been on using technology for the better.”
He also has experience in emergency management, having been involved in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and the Columbia Gas crisis, a series of gas leaks and fires that affected the communities of Lawrence, North Andover, and Andover in 2018.
Rebuild, Restructure
As the chief innovation officer, McClure will be tasked initially with rebuilding and restructuring the department, which has seen significant turnover recently.
“We actually posted three jobs today,” he said last week. “I know they had some staff movement and resignations, and people moving on. That’s one of the challenges with IT.”
The three positions include an IT Technician, an IT Systems Administrator, and an Assistant Director/Business Manager.
“I am sort of returning [the assistant IT director] role to serve as more of a business manager, focusing on project management, budget analysis, vendor management contracts … so we have more logistical support to do some of the things we want to do in the department,” McClure said.
As to what he hopes to do with the department, he’s still “getting the lay of the land.” At the moment, he’s ensuring that all systems are working as they should, making sure help request tickets are being responded to and resolved, and that billing and payroll are happening as they should.
From there, he’ll want to do a “deep dive” into the budget, seeing what’s there and what future budgets might look like. In the future, he’d also like to work on the website and expand the use of social media.
“I tend to focus on things that are [related to transparency] — GIS and mapping, document scanning, making things available to the public, social media … [and I’m] definitely looking at making some improvements to our network infrastructure,” he said.
Challenging Landscape
Cybersecurity is at the front of my mind.
“It really makes the landscape challenging,” he said. “I think my role as chief innovation officer … is to balance that risk of cyber security while still moving forward and innovating. Government … has challenges unique from the private sector in a lot of what we do is mandated, we have to do it by law. We have to be a bit more risk averse and there’s some things we just can’t fail.”
The town recently received a $77,625 cyber security grant from the state. According to McClure, the money will be used to work with consultants on policy development, emergency management, and testing for vulnerabilities in the network.
McClure said he prides himself on establishing connections with other departments, including the schools, and within the community, such as at the local cable access television station.
“Overall,” he said, “I think my goal with the department and my mission with IT in general has been really to give it a seat at the table with other decision makers and not relegate it to the back room where we‘re just keeping the lights on, and [instead] to really bring in IT perspectives of all kinds.”