FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, September 7, 2017

CONTACT: Jessica Gebert, South Dakota Bureau of Information and Telecommunications at (605) 773-8140 or jessica.gebert@state.sd.us

South Dakotan Elected to Lead National Association of State Technology Directors (NASTD)

PIERRE, S.D. - Pat Snow of the South Dakota Bureau of Information and Telecommunications (BIT) was elected president of the National Association of State Technology Directors (NASTD) during the group’s annual meeting in Memphis, TN on August 30.

Snow serves as BIT’s chief technology officer and director of telecommunications and has worked for the bureau since 1996.

“Pat is willing to share his vision and expertise with those wishing to utilize technology services to improve state government operations; this willingness to collaborate and offer thoughtful, reasoned, cost effective solutions meshes well with the NASTD mission to build partnerships among states to utilize technology to improve the delivery and efficiency of government services,” said BIT Commissioner David Zolnowsky. “Pat is well respected in South Dakota for his technology vision and leadership; his election to the NASTD presidency is a measure of the extent he is also recognized as a technology leader outside of South Dakota.”

Snow has served as the association’s vice president and program chair for the past year and through the coming year will lead the Executive Board which includes representatives from Ohio, Texas, and Massachusetts. Snow is the second Association president to hail from South Dakota, having been preceded by Jim Edman, South Dakota chief information security officer, in 2007.

“It is a great honor to lead NASTD for the coming year,” said Snow. “Technology is a great enabler for state governments and NASTD is an exceptional resource for technology peers to share knowledge and experiences.”

Throughout his career at BIT, Snow also served as data center architect, manager of endpoint services and manager of network technologies. According to Zolnowsky, Snow’s expertise has widely impacted state government, K-12 and higher education technology services. In his spare time, Snow enjoys fishing, hunting, biking, playing musical instruments and cheering on the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

NASTD represents information technology professionals from state governments, organized into four regions. Individual members provide and manage state government information technology services and facilities for state agencies and other public entities, often including hospitals, prisons, colleges and universities.  Former South Dakota Office of Telecommunications employee Jim Stein was an instrumental founding member of NASTD.