CIO of Texas-Mexico border city named 2025 technology champion – StateScoop

By Colin Wood
May 1, 2025
The National Association of State Chief Information Officers on Wednesday honored Jorge Cardenas, CIO of Brownsville, Texas, with its Technology Champion Award.
According to the announcement, Cardenas emphasizes the importance of technology to city operations and citizen experience. The city, a municipality of approximately 186,000 residents that sits on the Mexican border near the state’s southernmost tip, credits Cardenas with creating its first information technology department. Cardenas is also credited with upgrading the city’s network infrastructure to include 5G wireless and expanding its fiber optic network.
“As a city that is close to the border of Mexico, there are unique challenges that it must address,” NASCIO’s announcement reads. “The improvements that Jorge has implemented are expected to solve real-time issues like stopping stolen vehicles from crossing the border by using license plate reader technology, detecting unmanned [aerial] vehicles and improving perimeter security at the airport. These [upgrades] are also expected to attract more businesses to the city, creating job opportunities and fostering economic growth.”
According to his LinkedIn profile, Cardenas spent eight years in the Marine Corps before taking a series of jobs in the private sector as a contractor, operations manager, technical project manager for various technology firms. In August 2022, he began serving Brownsville as an IT director and was last year named CIO.
NASCIO has been awarding its Technology Champion Award since 2003, each year honoring IT officials who’ve made outsized contributions to their field and furthered the association’s mission of better serving the public through the creation of effective technology policy.

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