Office of Information Technology

Dr. Joanne Hale was appointed as Acting Secretary of Information Technology by Governor Bentley on January 4, 2016, and leads the state’s Information Technology policy, planning, and governance efforts. She brings to the Governor’s Cabinet, IT leadership experience gained from over 20 years of service as a Management Information Systems Professor for the Culverhouse College of Commerce at The University of Alabama. She built and led a nationally and internationally recognized Management Information Systems program, and published 60+ journal articles, conference proceedings and technical reports, building a reputation as an expert in Information Systems planning, strategy, project governance and disaster recovery.

While at UA, Joanne led an IT solutions delivery organization with 180+ developers. She managed an annual IT project portfolio of 40-50 diverse projects for private and public organizational clients including Enterprise IT planning, technology needs assessment, cost benefit analysis, disaster recovery, application development, and infrastructure design.

In 2011, Dr. Hale served on Governor Bentley’s Commission on Improving State Government IT Resource Utilization Subcommittee, charged with assessing the State of Alabama’s Information Technology resources against current and future needs, identifying critical gaps, and preparing recommendations for closing those gaps to drive efficiency of state government service delivery. In 2012, she co-chaired the State of Alabama Legislative Information Technology (IT) Study Group to Streamline State Government (2012).

Dr. Hale earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering and a Master of Science in Statistics from the University of Missouri, and a PhD in Management Information Systems from Texas Tech University.

For more information about the Office of Information Technology please visit their website here.