State Chief Data Officer Archetypes: The Evolving Roles and Capabilities of CDO Offices

Executive Summary 

TThis report is an advocacy tool for chief data officers (CDOs) looking to expand understanding of the CDO role and the conditions that contribute to its success. It identifies six archetypes of state-level CDO offices—clarifying common variations, the conditions that cause them, and possibilities that CDOs might aspire to.  

CDO offices have expanded across the country, yet no common model defines how they are structured, resourced, or positioned. Drawing on comparative survey data developed in partnership with the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) and self-reported data from the State Chief Data Officer (CDO) Tracker, this report examines how state CDO offices, and equivalent state data offices, are designed and operate across states, and the implications.

Key takeaways:

• There is no “optimal” model. An office’s archetype reflects tradeoffs among competing institutional priorities. It is dynamic, not linear, and offices blend characteristics as goals and maturity evolve. 
• Funding constraints are persistent across all maturity levels. Inadequate funding is a consistently cited challenge for the majority of states, indicating that resource pressures are structural.
• Reporting structure shapes strategic orientation. State CDOs remain predominantly aligned with IT leadership. While this enables execution of technical data initiatives at scale, it can limit a CDO’s ability to shape data strategy, governance, and policy.
• Some challenges and priorities evolve alongside data maturity, while others—particularly data quality and cross-agency data sharing—persist.
• Building strategic relationships and trust is essential. Strong partnerships with top administration officials and IT leadership are foundational for successfully implementing enterprise-level data strategies.

This report addresses the analytical gap in how offices with similar aspirations function so differently in practice. In doing so, it offers a tool for data leaders looking to increase their office’s funding and authority through strategic conversations with decision-makers and data management stakeholders.

1. Introduction

This report is envisioned as a tool to help CDOs advocate for greater funding, authority, and expansion. By identifying common archetypes of state-level CDO offices, it helps CDOs understand and communicate their current positioning, and provides aspirational models for how that positioning can evolve. 

It also serves as a primer for members of government who may be unfamiliar with the CDO role, but who impact and are impacted by its work—the governor’s office, IT leadership, budget and legal officials, data owners, data architects, data stewards, and legislators who control the budget and permanent establishment of CDO offices. 

Advocacy for greater resources requires greater understanding of the CDO role, its potential impact, and the conditions that contribute to its success. Data leaders should use this report as a North Star for expanding what they know to be possible, and an entry point for the stakeholders who can help them reach their goals. 

Emergence of the State CDO

As data has become central to modern governance and service delivery, the CDO has emerged as a critical role in state government. The position has been adopted by more than 30 states and the District of Columbia, reflecting a shift toward states’ more strategic use of data. As data strategies grow more sophisticated, CDOs are emerging as leaders in data sharing, analytics, responsible AI, data literacy, and cross-agency collaboration. 

The role has emerged less through deliberate institutional design than through a convergence of practical pressures, including data-sharing mandates, digital modernization, rising demand for analytics, and growing attention to data risk and AI. These differences in institutional context and pressures have created urgency without a standardized model for adoption.

The Challenge of Interpreting Variation

Despite wide variation in authority, placement, and scope, CDO offices are often assigned similar expectations: improve data sharing, strengthen data governance, support data analytics, and enable more effective use of data in policy and operations. At the same time, the conditions under which CDO offices operate vary substantially. The wide variation in CDO offices’ operating contexts makes it difficult to discuss the space as a whole, compare needs and challenges, or draw meaningful distinctions about how these offices function in practice.

Archetypes as an Analytical Framework

This report uses archetypes as a comparative tool to organize patterns in how state CDO offices are designed and operate. Archetypes provide a way to compress complexity and showcase meaningful differences in mandate, capacity, ecosystem, and maturity among offices. 

By grouping CDO offices that operate under similar institutional conditions, archetypes help explain variation without treating each state as unique or assuming an ideal model for the role. For example, archetypes can help make more insightful budget comparisons across CDO offices by baselining evaluation across similar attributes.

Archetypes are descriptive rather than normative—they do not rank offices by effectiveness or prescribe how they should be structured. Together, the archetypes give practitioners a shared vocabulary for discussing how CDO offices are designed, resourced, and evolving across diverse contexts, making it easier to understand operating constraints and realities.

2. Four Key Components Shaping CDO Offices

To compare patterns in state CDO variations, our analysis is organized around the following components: 

• Mandate and structure
• Capacity
• Ecosystem and influence
• Maturity trajectory

Each component captures a different facet of how a CDO office operates, with intentional overlap across them. Mandate and structure, capacity, and ecosystem and influence describe complementary aspects of authority, resources, and relationships. Maturity trajectory provides a longitudinal view of institutional development and a CDO office’s sustainability. The framework looks at how a CDO’s office is set up and resourced, rather than an individual’s leadership qualities or the political environment they’re operating in. 

Taken together, these components help explain why CDO offices with similar titles may look very different in practice.

Mandate and Structure

How the CDO office is established (e.g., by statute, executive order, administrative action, or informally), where it sits within state government, and what responsibilities it is expected to carry. This component reflects how formal authority and organizational alignment shape the durability of the role and its insulation from turnover, as well as its ability to influence activity across agencies.

Indicators

• Existence of a statewide CDO or equivalent role
• Formal establishment mechanism (e.g., statute, executive action, administrative program)
• Formally or informally established statewide CDO office or program
• Organizational reporting alignment (policy leadership vs. Chief Information Officer / enterprise IT)
• Defined scope of authority over statewide data governance activities

Capacity

The material resources available to the CDO office and how they influence its ability to execute work. This includes both staffing and budget support as well as how those resources are allocated via centralized, federated, or hybrid operating models. Capacity shapes the work an office can sustain, and its ability to exceed its formal mandate.

Indicators

• Permanent full-time state employees supporting the CDO
• Reliance on contractors or temporary staff to augment capacity
• Presence of a dedicated, recurring budget for CDO functions
• Budget scale relative to state size
• Overall operational capacity combining staffing and budget resources

Ecosystem and Influence

The relationships, governance reach, and institutional support that allow the CDO office to translate mandate into action. This component reflects relational rather than formal power—who listens to and collaborates with the office, and whether its guidance is widely adopted. Key relationships include the governor’s office, budget and legal offices, IT counterparts (CIO, CISO, CDSO, CPO), agency leadership, and external partners such as universities, nonprofits, federal agencies, and civic tech organizations. Small offices can punch above their weight with strong networks, while well-resourced offices can struggle without allies.

Indicators

• Breadth of formal data governance responsibilities across domains
• Degree of cross-agency coordination and advisory orientation
• Emphasis on relationship-building with executive, agency, and legislative stakeholders
• Focus on enterprise-wide data literacy as a mechanism for influence
• Reported strength or weakness of executive and agency support

Maturity Trajectory

How durable, repeatable, and embedded data leadership and supporting practices are. This report looks at commitment (stability of leadership, authority, governance, and resourcing), data talent pipeline (presence of training and workforce development infrastructure), and data strategy (existence and recency of statewide strategy, governance frameworks, and shared data infrastructure). Maturity is often uneven across these categories, and can stall or reverse. (Assessment references the Beeck Center State Data-Maturity Assessment.)

Indicators

• Durability of the CDO role and office (formalization, authority, continuity)
• Stability and sufficiency of staffing and budget over time
• Existence and maintenance of a statewide data strategy
• Presence of shared data infrastructure (e.g., data inventories or catalogs)
• Adoption of data governance or data management frameworks
• Availability of statewide data skills training or workforce development programs

3. Six Archetypes of State CDO Offices

The following section outlines six recurring configurations of state CDO offices observed across states. Each reflects a distinct alignment of mandate, capacity, influence, and maturity that shapes how a CDO office operates in practice and what it is realistically positioned to accomplish. 

Lone Builder Early-stage office with limited authority and resources	IT-Aligned Educator Technical CDO office embedded within IT structures	Policy Strategist Executive-aligned, prioritizes policy over technical delivery	Internal Consultant Well-resourced shared services hub for agency data support	Network Weaver Relationship-driven, advances goals through coalitions	Governance Steward Standards-focused, establishes enterprise data policies
MATURITY
Early, with foundational capabilities still forming	Mid to high operational maturity, with uneven governance maturity	High governance maturity and variable technical maturity	High in analytics, sharing, and operational service delivery	Above average in data sharing and variable in governance	High in governance frameworks and variable in analytics or service provision
MANDATE
Narrow to emerging, often informal or administratively established	Operational and IT aligned, with a primary focus on infrastructure	Broad and policy-centric, often statutory or established through executive action	Formal support function with multi-year stability	Moderate, with influence often exceeding formal authority	Strong governance and statewide authority
CAPACITY
Low, with a lean team and limited budget	Moderate to high, with staffing concentrated in technical roles	Small to moderate, with high-skill generalist staff	High, with large teams and diversified roles	Moderate, with roles emphasizing partnerships and coordination	Moderate to high, with staffing focused on governance and compliance roles
ECOSYSTEM AND INFLUENCE
Limited alliances, mostly ad hoc collaborations	Strong internal IT ties and limited policy or executive visibility	Strong alliances with the governor’s office, budget office, and cabinet leaders	Strong internal agency demand and broad partnership reach	Very high, with extensive cross-sector relationships	Strong ties to legal, privacy, compliance, and security offices

Lone Builder

The Lone Builder archetype is an early-stage or informal CDO function operating with limited authority and minimal resources, but high initiative, often operating in the absence of an institutionalized CDO office. They build the foundational scaffolding for state data leadership, one project and one relationship at a time.

Key Components

Mandate and Structure
The role typically has either no formal mandate or one that is narrow, ambiguous, or newly established. In some cases, the Lone Builder reflects an individual taking on the de facto responsibilities of a state data leader in a state without a formally designated CDO role or data office. 

Authority is limited or undefined, reporting relationships may be informal, and expectations for the role are still being interpreted and negotiated. As a result, the scope of action is shaped more by initiative than by formal authorization.

Capacity
Capacity is low. The office typically has little or no dedicated budget and very small teams, often consisting of a single individual. Work is carried out as resources allow, and may rely on temporary funding, short-term contractor support, or individual effort rather than sustained infrastructure or staffing.

Ecosystem and Influence
Progress depends heavily on individual relationships and ad hoc collaboration. Influence is built through trust, credibility, and early coalition-building rather than through formal governance mechanisms. The office’s ability to advance work is closely tied to personal networks and informal sponsorship.

Maturity Trajectory
Lone Builders operate at the earliest stage of institutional development. Efforts focus on establishing the case for statewide data leadership, documenting needs, introducing foundational practices, and demonstrating value through narrowly scoped projects. Activities are oriented toward creating the conditions for a more formalized role over time.

Value Proposition

The Lone Builder often creates initial momentum for statewide data leadership through tightly scoped wins that establish credibility and signal the potential value of the role. Their primary constraints are influence and sustainability. Progress is difficult to scale or maintain over time in environments where mandate, funding, or role clarity do not exist.

IT-Aligned Executor

The IT-Aligned Executor archetype is a technically-oriented CDO office situated within an IT or CIO-led structure, with a primary focus on platforms, infrastructure, and operational execution.

Key Components

Mandate and Structure
The office’s authority is tied to enterprise IT functions and is typically led by a CIO or related technology leadership role. The office has little formal authority over data policy or program decisions, and tends to engage other agencies on technical priorities. The mandate often emphasizes data architecture, infrastructure, interoperability, and technical standards.

Capacity
Capacity is moderate to high, particularly in technical roles. Funding is often embedded within IT budgets rather than allocated distinctly for a CDO office. The operating model centers on delivering shared platforms, tools, and services that support agency systems and modernization efforts.

Ecosystem and Influence
The office has strong relationships with cross-agency IT and technology teams. Influence beyond IT—particularly with policy, budget, program leadership, or external partners—is more limited.

Maturity Trajectory
IT-Aligned Executors exhibit uneven governance maturity across states, often with high operational maturity in areas such as system modernization, data platforms, and technical interoperability, and lower in governance maturity and cross-agency policy or strategy leadership. Some CDO offices, however, have the authority and influence to do more than just technical work.

Value Proposition

The IT-Aligned Executor contributes by reducing technical fragmentation and advancing shared infrastructure. The primary constraint is scope. Alignment with IT enables execution at scale, but can limit the office’s ability to shape broader data strategy, governance, or policy-driven priorities.

Policy Strategist

The Policy Strategist archetype describes a CDO office positioned close to the governor’s office, executive administration, or budget leadership. Compared with other configurations, these offices place greater emphasis on the role of data governance and equity, data as a tool for statewide coordination, and policy alignment rather than on direct technical delivery. In this configuration, the CDO role focuses on agenda-setting, standards, and cross-agency coherence.

Key Components

Mandate and Structure
The office typically reports to the governor’s office, a cabinet secretary, or a central administrative or budget authority. This positioning among senior government officials helps move the needle on policy-centric work, especially when it comes to establishing enterprise-level data governance, setting standards for data management, and coordinating data efforts across agencies.

Capacity
Teams are small to medium in size and, relative to other CDO offices, include a higher mix of high-expertise generalists, policy staff, or strategic advisors. The operating model emphasizes guidance, coordination, and influence, often with more limited ownership of infrastructure, analytics, or shared services. Execution depends heavily on alignment with agencies and delivery partners.

Ecosystem and Influence
Policy Strategists tend to have strong relationships with executive leadership, budget offices, and senior agency officials. This helps align data initiatives with policy and fiscal processes, but the office relies on cooperation from others to implement.

Maturity Trajectory
Policy Strategists often have relatively high maturity in governance structures, strategic planning, and enterprise coordination, while technical and delivery maturity varies across states. The focus is on institutionalizing statewide strategies, decision-making processes, and accountability mechanisms.

Value Proposition

As the state’s strategic data leader, the Policy Strategist shapes statewide data priorities and integrates data considerations into policy, budgeting, executive decision-making, and agency practices. The central constraint is often the reliance on agency data leaders and IT organizations for execution.

Internal Consultant

The Internal Consultant archetype describes an often well-resourced CDO office that operates as a shared services and resource hub for data, analytics, and governance support to state agencies. The office drives responsible data use by providing consultative support for data initiatives across the state.

Key Components

Mandate and Structure
The office is typically formally established and authorized to provide enterprise and agency-facing support functions. Its role is clearly defined as a service provider, offering analytic, technical, and governance support to agencies.

Capacity
Capacity is high, with large, multi-disciplinary teams and sustained funding. The operating model depends on inbound requests for support, offering shared analytics, platforms, tools, and governance support in response to agency demand. Work is often organized through project pipelines and service agreements.

Ecosystem and Influence
The office maintains relationships across agencies and frequently collaborates with external partners such as universities, federal entities, and research organizations. The Internal Consultant’s influence is reinforced by consistent demand for services and a track record of delivery. Their credibility is built through successful execution.

Maturity Trajectory
Internal Consultants typically reflect higher levels of operational maturity, with established processes for intake, delivery, and cross-agency coordination. Over time, emphasis often shifts toward sustaining services and managing scale.

Value Proposition

The Internal Consultant reduces duplication of costly and labor-intensive data initiatives, provides shared resources, lowers barriers to data capabilities, and delivers reliable, high-quality support to agencies through centralized coordination. The primary constraint is managing scope and expectations, particularly as demand for services grows faster than available capacity.

Network Weaver

The Network Weaver is a coordination-oriented CDO office that advances data initiatives by mobilizing cross-agency and cross-sector networks. It operates more through relationships, partnerships, coalition-building, and collaborative problem-solving than through formal authority or owning projects.

Key Components

Mandate and Structure
The Network Weaver’s formal authority may be limited, and organizational placement varies. The role is often positioned to convene across agencies rather than to direct or enforce action. Their mandate may emphasize coordination, facilitation, and alignment, depending more on positioning and trust than formal power.

Capacity
Capacity is moderate and oriented toward facilitation, coordination, and partnership management. Teams tend to be small, with staff focused on relationship management, translation, and cross-agency alignment.

Ecosystem and Influence
Ecosystem strength is its defining feature. The office maintains extensive relationships across agencies and with external partners, including universities, nonprofits, federal entities, and civic technology organizations. Influence derives from credibility, the ability to align diverse actors around joint objectives, and visible shared wins.

Maturity Trajectory
Network Weavers often operate in mid-stage maturity contexts with above-average data sharing maturity, particularly in decentralized or federated environments. Their effectiveness depends on sustained relationships, continuity of leadership, and the ability to maintain engagement across shifting political or organizational conditions.

Value Proposition

The Network Weaver enables collaboration and mobilizes distributed capacity where centralized authority or delivery is limited. The primary constraint is fragility. Influence and momentum can erode quickly with turnover, changes in leadership, or shifts in political and strategic priorities.

Governance Steward

The Governance Steward is a governance-first CDO office focused on establishing and maintaining statewide standards, policies, and controls for data use. The office advances enterprise data objectives through rule-setting, oversight, and risk management, ensuring that data is governed responsibly and consistently across the enterprise.

Key Components

Mandate and Structure
The office is often established through statute or executive action and is granted clear authority over enterprise data governance. Its mandate typically includes standards-setting, privacy, data access, quality, and risk management. Authority is formalized and statewide, with responsibilities clearly defined across agencies.

Capacity
Capacity is moderate to high and oriented toward governance and oversight. Staffing is focused on governance and compliance roles, emphasizing frameworks, review processes, and enforcement to ensure consistency and accountability.

Ecosystem and Influence
The office maintains strong ties to legal, privacy, security, and risk management functions as well as to senior leadership responsible for compliance and oversight. Influence is reinforced by formal authority and clear governance processes.

Maturity Trajectory
Governance Stewards typically reflect advanced governance maturity, with well-documented frameworks and established lifecycle processes. Delivery and analytics capabilities vary depending on the degree to which responsibilities are centralized or federated across the state.

Value Proposition

The Governance Steward provides durable rules of the road for responsible data use and reduces statewide risk. A primary constraint is visibility. Governance-focused work often produces fewer short-term, tangible outputs than delivery-oriented models, which can make impact less immediately apparent.

4. Cross-State Insights

The archetypes describe patterns in CDO office configurations. Cross-state survey data adds further clarity into alignment, resourcing, maturity, and strategic priorities that cut across archetypes. Together, these patterns emphasize constraints and opportunities observed across multiple archetypes.

Insight 1: Reporting Structure and Role Orientation

Most state CDO offices report to the CIO or equivalent technology leadership, while a smaller share report to administrative, financial, or executive leadership. This contrasts with recent private-sector trends, identified in the 2026 AI & Data Leadership Executive Benchmark Survey, where CDO roles are increasingly managed by business and enterprise leaders.

Where a CDO sits within state government shapes strategic orientation, how the role is framed, and the kinds of problems it is empowered to solve. Reporting within an IT agency tends to focus the role on managing technical platforms and infrastructure. Reporting to executive, budget, or administrative leadership more often situates the role in enterprise strategy, cross-agency coordination, and data governance. 

Across the archetypes, IT-aligned reporting is most commonly associated with IT-Aligned Executor configurations, while policy- and executive-aligned reporting is more closely associated with Policy Strategist and Governance Steward offices. This reflects a recurring tradeoff in how CDO offices are structured. Reporting to IT supports execution and scale, but can limit the CDO’s seat at decision-making tables. Reporting to executive or policy leaders elevates CDOs’ role in strategy and coordination, but creates more dependence on IT partners for technical implementation.

Insight 2: Top Challenges by Maturity

Inadequate funding is a persistent challenge, rather than one resolved as an organization matures. What changes is the nature of constraints states face. Early-stage CDOs struggle to establish legitimacy and baseline capability. Mid-maturity CDOs struggle to scale execution. Advanced CDO offices struggle to sustain talent, manage complexity, and maintain quality at scale. Maturity reduces some barriers but replaces them with more complex, cross-cutting organizational and workforce challenges.

Low-maturity CDO offices primarily face foundational constraints that limit the ability to operate with authority and consistency. Challenges center on establishing sufficient authority for the state CDO and building baseline data literacy across agencies. Organizational resistance to change is significant, reflecting the difficulty of introducing more advanced enterprise data practices in environments where data norms are still emerging. Challenges related to infrastructure complexity are least cited, suggesting that foundational legitimacy and capability remain the dominant concerns.

Medium-maturity CDO offices shift from questions of legitimacy toward execution and scaling. Staffing capacity, specialized data skills, and data quality become more prominent as CDOs attempt to operationalize data initiatives across agencies. Initial governance structures and technical foundations are often in place, and sustaining and scaling them through people, process, and cross-agency coordination becomes the primary challenge.

High-maturity CDO offices face constraints shaped by sustainability and organizational complexity rather than basic capacity gaps. Staffing and specialized data skills can still be limited, alongside persistent data quality challenges that intensify as systems and use cases scale. Authority-related challenges are rare at this stage, suggesting that mandate and formal positioning now support enterprise data leadership, even as operational complexity grows. At the same time, organizational resistance to change re-emerges as advanced CDO offices drive more ambitious, cross-agency, or large-scale initiatives that require shifts in long-standing practices.

Insight 3: Top Priorities by Maturity

Across all maturity levels, priorities evolve similarly to challenges. Early-stage states focus on building institutional conditions for data use. Medium-maturity states concentrate on operationalizing and scaling those foundations. High-maturity states shift toward advanced analytical use and transformation. Some priorities, particularly data quality and cross-agency data sharing, remain consistently high across all stages, proving themselves enduring institutional concerns rather than transitional ones. These patterns reinforce the view of maturity as progression through evolving challenges, not movement toward an ideal endpoint.

Low-maturity CDO offices prioritize foundational enterprise capabilities. Top priorities include building a data-driven culture, enabling basic data sharing, establishing governance structures, and improving baseline data quality. Advanced technical initiatives such as AI, advanced analytics, and platform modernization are low priorities, reflecting a focus on establishing organizational and governance preconditions for more advanced work.

Medium-maturity CDO offices prioritize operational effectiveness. Data sharing, data quality, and governance remain central, but the emphasis shifts from initial setup toward making these systems work at scale, across agencies. Advanced analytics and AI rank as lower priorities, indicating that many states view them as secondary until core data assets, processes, and governance structures are more established.

High-maturity CDO offices display a distinct shift in priorities. While data quality and cross-agency data sharing remain top priorities, advanced analytics and AI become a greater focus for high-maturity states, reflecting an emphasis on leveraging existing infrastructure and governance for strategic insight and impact. Foundational efforts such as basic data literacy and establishing data governance practices are a lesser priority, suggesting these elements become increasingly institutionalized.

Conclusion

The institutional configuration of CDO offices shapes how state governments lead with data. Differences in structure determine how CDO offices can support service delivery, inform consequential policy decisions, steward sensitive information, and navigate emerging spaces like advanced analytics and responsible AI. These configurations define not only what CDO offices are called, but what they can realistically accomplish.

CDO configurations are dynamic and shift over time as states navigate tensions between authority and flexibility, centralization and coordination, and delivery and governance. These structural tradeoffs shape how states balance innovation and oversight, scale and collaboration, and strategy and execution. Across states, effectiveness depends on institutional alignment—CDO offices gain traction when formal authority, resourcing, and relational reach are well-matched to their strategic goals.

This report does not prescribe a single model for state data leadership. It identifies recurring configurations and cross-state patterns to clarify how authority, capacity, ecosystem influence, and maturity interact in practice. 

Archetypes ground these dynamics in observed CDO experiences, providing a shared vocabulary for understanding how institutional structure shapes the possibilities and constraints of data leadership.

Acknowledgments

This report would not have been possible without the support and contributions of many.

We are grateful to our funders, whose generous support makes the work of the State Chief Data Officers Network possible. We also extend our sincere thanks to the network members who contributed their time, expertise, and insights throughout the development of this report—particularly Raivo Murnieks (Ohio), Weston Merrick (Minnesota), Scott Gausland (Rhode Island), Karthik Yajurvedi (Massachusetts), Joshua Wolff (Massachusetts), Rebecca Cai (Hawaii), and Josh Wagner (Arizona).

We appreciate the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) for their collaboration on the 2025 State Chief Data Officer Survey, which served as a foundational input for this work.

Lastly, we would like to recognize the Beeck Center team for their contributions to this report: Ali Benson, Director of Training and Technical Assistance; Walter Hall, Student Analyst; Elham Ali, Senior Manager of Research and Engagement; and Rachel Meade Smith, contributing writer and editor.