Leading Local Government IT
A CIO-Level Framework and Field Guide to Build a High-Performing IT Organization
By Steve Monaghan
Local Government CIO | 25 years | GovTech Top 25
Hardcover - Paperback - Kindle
Releasing July 20, 2026
You were promoted for your technical skills. This is the leadership framework they never taught you.
A CIO from a much larger county pulled me aside at a conference and asked how an organization our size was doing what we were doing. Smaller team. Smaller budget. Better outcomes on the work that mattered.
I didn't have a clean answer for him that day.
I do now.
This book is the answer. It's the framework I wish someone had handed me when I took the chair. It's the field guide I built from twenty-five years of doing the work, getting it wrong, and getting it right.
WHAT'S IN IT
Module 1
Being a Government IT Leader
The transition from technical excellence to leadership effectiveness. Purpose, time, leadership principles, political navigation, and communication.
Module 2
Building a Healthy Organization
The five pillars of organizational health: leadership team, vision and purpose, structure, capabilities, culture, and communications.
Module 3
Working on the Right Stuff
Strategic alignment so IT works on what advances the organization's mission. Governance, planning, frameworks and standards, services, budget.
Module 4
Delivering Great Service
Service excellence as a different orientation than technical excellence. Enabling other departments to accomplish their mission through technology.
Module 5
Continuously Improving
Building sustainable continuous improvement into the organization so the work doesn't stop when the frameworks are in place.
A consolidated field guide in Appendix A ties the whole framework together as a working reference.
WHO IT'S FOR
If you're running IT in a county, city, special district, or small agency under 500,000 people, this book is written for you.
If you're a director, deputy, or manager preparing to take the chair, this book is the one your future self wishes you'd read before you got there.
If you've read the consultant decks and walked away thinking none of this was written by someone who has actually done the work, start here.
A GLIMPSE INSIDE
The Purity Trap
The most frustrated IT leaders are often the ones who've lost sight of their actual purpose. They've confused "how" government IT works with "why" it exists.
There's a real danger in IT leadership. It comes from something that looks like virtue: a commitment to best practices, to standards, to doing things the right way. And those things matter.
But somewhere along the way, the commitment to doing things right starts to crowd out the commitment to doing the right thing. The infrastructure isn't clean enough. The security posture isn't mature enough. The users don't understand the constraints. The executives make uninformed decisions.
These are not the same thing.
From Module 1, Section 1.1. One of the named patterns the book identifies and gives you a way out of.
Steve Monaghan
Prior California county CIO · 25 years in local government IT · CGCIO, CGEIT, CRISC, CISA · CSAC Institute instructor
Twenty-five years of doing the work. One book. The framework I wish someone had handed me.
Now go build something that matters.
©2026. All rights reserved. Published by LGOV LLC stevemonaghan.com