Mr. Christopher C. O’Brien was appointed the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the City of Chicago by mayor Richard M. Daley in April of 2000. As Chief Information Officer and Commissioner of the Department of Business and Information Services (BIS), Mr. O’Brien’s role is to ensure that technology is used as a tool to make the services of the City of Chicago more efficient and more accessible to citizens. As the CIO, Mr. O’Brien is also the Commissioner of the Department of Business and Information Services, the City’s primary technology planning and implementation and maintenance organization.

Specifically, Mr. O’Brien’s charge is to implement Mayor Daley’s vision of a city government that borrows the best practices of private industry and other governmental bodies to raise the level of service provided to citizens, tourists and businesses. As the CIO, Mr. O’Brien oversees several reengineering and technology implementation projects, including streamlining the City’s procurement and financial processes to attract qualified firms to partner with the City, redesigning the tax, licensing, permitting and inspections processes City-wide to improve service and efficiency and implementing a Geographic Information System which provides digital maps, photographs and up-to-date data on all property City-wide. Furthermore, one of Mr. O’Brien’s primary objectives is to make as many services as possible available to the public via the City’s web site, www.cityofchicago.org. 

In addition, Mr. O’Brien oversees the maintenance, upkeep and performance of the City’s 10,000+ personal computers and a wide area network that encompasses more than 100 City offices and locations.

Mr. O’Brien joined the City of Chicago in 1998, and originally served as Managing Deputy Chief Information Officer in charge of Strategic Planning for the City. In that role, Mr. O’Brien coordinated the implementation of City-wide reengineering and technology development initiatives and lead the City’s Year 2000 (Y2K) readiness project. Prior to joining the City of Chicago, Mr. O’Brien was a Senior Consultant with CSC Index, the management consulting division of Computer Sciences Corporation. In that capacity, Mr. O’Brien partnered with clients in the retail, energy and health care sectors of the economy to achieve dramatic benefits through business process reengineering and implementation of process enabling technology. 

Mr. O’Brien received a Master’s in Management degree in 1995 from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. He lives in the Roscoe Village neighborhood of Chicago.

This page was last updated on 03/28/05.  
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