Paula Starr is a Cherokee citizen leading technology delivery at the Cherokee Nation, the United States' largest federally recognized tribe. With a team that supports 4,000 employees across Cherokee reservation CIO Starr is in a unique position to deliver digital services while maintaining community values.
We caught up with Starr, a BT150 member, at Constellation Research's Connected Enterprise 2023 to talk shop. Here are the takeaways from our conversation.
Cherokee Nation's reach. Starr said the Cherokee Nation is the largest recognized tribe in the US with 460,000 people and a 7,000 square mile reservation. However, the Cherokee Nation's digital presence has to reach beyond the reservation and reach the population in 23 countries. Starr said:
"We have citizens who obviously live off of the reservation and all across the world. We are endeavoring to be able to reach every one of those citizens. If you wanted to interact with your government, it was a matter of coming into our headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, or making a phone call to us. There was no digital outreach. There were no digital applications or forms whatsoever."
"We had a whole group of citizens that we call our at large citizens who were going unserved and unconnected. We have really tried to increase our digital outreach."
Customer experience and service requires empathy. Starr, who is also Cherokee, said that 88% of her IT team is also Cherokee. That shared experience helps create better customer service. She said:
"So many of us have grown up needing services and we know what it's like to be vulnerable and to need help. We've gone to the health services and clinics. Many of us were born in Indian hospitals, including myself. So, it's very natural for us to have empathy and compassion for our citizens. But beyond that, we also tried to serve according to our Cherokee community values. There's a whole list of 21 values that are common to the Cherokee Nation and much of it overlaps with ITIL. We use a lot of ITIL best practices correlated together with community values."
ITIL and Cherokee values. Starr acknowledges that ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) best practices and Cherokee values may not seem like a fit at first, but they align in multiple areas. The correlation between Cherokee values and ITIL equates to almost built in design thinking. ITIL is a framework used to standardize the selection, planning, delivery, maintenance, and lifecycle of IT services. Starr explained:
"The first ITIL principle that you'll find is focus on value. The only way you can focus on value is if you understand who defines value. Customers, your stakeholders, or whoever is using the thing that you're producing defined that for you as the practitioner. You don't find that view in a lot of IT shops where practitioners think they absolutely define the value. To get to that understanding that we don't define value our customers do, we refer to one of the Cherokee community values which says hold one other sacred. It ties together because you are holding your customer sacred. And you understand that their missions are sacred. You're absolutely going to work with them to define value and ensure that you're serving what provides them value."
Priorities and projects. Starr said prioritizing projects is hard for the tribe due to its unique needs. Traditionally, the biggest battle was to maintain sovereignty with Oklahoma. That battle has never gone away, but a 2019 Supreme Court ruling meant that reservations were never dissolved and have jurisdiction of their lands. And that jurisdiction goes beyond public safety. Police, court and other departments all needed systems built quickly. "There's a whole lot of need there," said Starr.
There is also the IT behind keeping the Cherokee language alive as only 2,000 citizens out of nearly 500,000 speak it. Starr said:
"We are rapidly losing the Cherokee language. Of all of these things how do you prioritize one of those things over the other? One makes you inherently Cherokee and the other is public safety amidst all the other things to work on. We follow the lead of our departments and what they make a priority. We just work to digitize everything as fast as we can."
Cherokee Nation's digital borders. Starr said programs are grouped based on whether a citizen is on the reservation or outside of it. "There are programs to serve those in the reservation and others that open up. Having digital systems helps us out because when someone logs in, we know where they are coming from," said Starr. "We have contact information and know whether it is within our jurisdiction. We can also make a determination of what they qualify for."
Priorities for 2024. Starr said the biggest initiative for Cherokee Nation is wellness. The IT budget is funded by subsidiaries such as hospitality and federal contracting. She said:
"In the year ahead, we are really looking at Cherokee wellness. There's a big initiative across the entirety of Cherokee Nation government to look at wellness and say, We understand wellness is not just physical wellness, it is also mental. It is your connection to your culture. It is your connection to community. You know, there's a lot of talk here at this conference about loneliness, those kinds of things, how do we measure that across our citizenry and how do we help where help is needed? There’s going to be a big technological component to that."
There will also be plenty of system upgrades as well as generative AI. Starr said generative AI can help with services as well as security. A Cherokee Nation large language model could also be a possibility at some point.
Challenges and opportunities ahead. Starr said AI has the potential to upgrade the level of services provided. There's also an opportunity to education IT staff with AI. Those AI opportunities also present challenges. The key thing is keeping up with AI in the public sector and continually teaching the team. Starr concluded:
"I also feel like there's an advantage right now to those who can just learn the fastest. I think that we've got a staff that's highly engaged and has high levels of capability that can learn a lot very quickly. So, I'm really excited about what we're able to do.
"The challenges for us are that it's hard for public sector to keep up in the age of AI, There's so much opportunity but for public sector, it's very hard. I worry about keeping up across all Indian country, to be honest. How do we meet this age of technological advancement and how do we help our friends across the other tribes get there as well?"
