{"id":263375,"date":"2026-06-03T16:54:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T20:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/illinois-hires-its-first-chief-ai-officer\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T17:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:00:12","slug":"illinois-hires-its-first-chief-ai-officer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/illinois-hires-its-first-chief-ai-officer\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois hires its first chief AI officer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Illinois hires its first chief AI officer<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/statescoop.com\/illinois-hires-its-first-chief-ai-officer\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-03 16:54:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: statescoop.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Kader Sakkaria joined the Illinois Department of Innovation & Technology as its first chief artificial intelligence officer on June 1, the agency announced this week.<\/p>\n

A longtime technologist, Sakkaria most recently served as head of global data technology at Arthur J. Gallagher. Prior to that, he held leadership roles at Ruffalo Noel Levitz and BMO Harris Bank, and served as an innovation and technology commissioner for the City of Aurora in Illinois.<\/p>\n

As Illinois\u2019 chief AI officer, Sakkaria will lead its enterprise AI strategy and support the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence across the state\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

\u201cSakkaria brings extensive experience in artificial intelligence, data strategy, and enterprise technology transformation,\u201d Jennifer Jennings, a spokesperson for the department, told StateScoop in an email.<\/p>\n

The state began actively recruiting for the role in December to lead its then newly established Office of the CAIO and guide state AI strategy, governance and ethical deployment.<\/p>\n

During the monthslong recruitment period, Illinois CIO Brandon Ragle said the state\u2019s DoIT was looking for a \u201cstatistical-minded person that understands governance and use cases and is passionate about government services.\u201d He added that the CAIO would work with the state\u2019s chief data officer and chief enterprise architect to form a \u201ctriangle of AI governance policy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the chief data officer is out there working and the chief architect, from the technology landscape, is making sure we keep our arms around the massive continual opportunity for sprawl with all the different AI tools that are coming in every day, so put those three together in a group under a deputy secretary to kind of lead that,\u201d Ragle explained in an interview last month.<\/p>\n

The state released its statewide AI policy last April and rolled out a new chatbot tool to 55,000 users in October.<\/p>\n

\u201cCuriosity creates innovation, and innovation is…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Illinois hires its first chief AI officer https:\/\/statescoop.com\/illinois-hires-its-first-chief-ai-officer\/ Publish Date: 2026-06-03 16:54:00 Source Domain: statescoop.com…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":263376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/06\/272443853_356967959761829_7536583837256371907_n-e1780519665831.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263377,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263375\/revisions\/263377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}