{"id":67641,"date":"2024-10-25T14:00:05","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T18:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/?p=67641"},"modified":"2024-10-25T14:00:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T18:00:35","slug":"oklahoma-cio-joe-mcintosh-ethics-settlement-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/oklahoma-cio-joe-mcintosh-ethics-settlement-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma\u2019s CIO is out after ethics settlement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Joe McIntosh, who served as Oklahoma\u2019s chief information officer the past 16 months, is no longer employed by the state, officials confirmed with StateScoop on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from confirming McIntosh\u2019s employment status, a spokesperson with the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services declined to answer any questions about McIntosh\u2019s departure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOMES thanks Joe McIntosh for his service to Oklahoma and wishes him well on his future endeavors,\u201d the spokesperson wrote in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McIntosh declined to go on the record for this story. His LinkedIn profile<\/a> shows that he is now self-employed as a \u201cDigital & Data Strategy Consultant\u201d searching for part-time roles as an \u201cone-demand\u201d CIO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Joe
Joe McIntosh (LinkedIn)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

McIntosh joined the state government in 2020 as a senior director of app development and data before Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed him to his Cabinet in July 2023. Before joining the state, McIntosh held technical leadership roles at the fast-food chain Sonic Drive-In and worked as a software developer for Objectstream, an Oklahoma City tech firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to documents published this month by the Oklahoma Ethics Commission, McIntosh reached a settlement with the state in which he agreed to pay $2,500 for two ethics violations. A summary of the settlement<\/a> shows that McIntosh self-reported the violations and that he’d incurred no previous ethics violations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the agreement, McIntosh broke a rule<\/a> related to impartiality, which relates to situations in which an employee \u201cknows that a particular matter involving specific parties is likely to have a direct and predictable effect on the material financial interests of the state officer or employee or of his or her family member.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other rule<\/a> McIntosh broke was called \u201cmisuse of office,\u201d which prohibits public officials from endorsing products, profiting financially from their positions or using their positions to help family members profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of the settlement, McIntosh agreed to undergo ethics training, which he had already completed. The settlement also required that \u201ccorrective measures\u201d be taken to ensure McIntosh would in the future not be involved in any contracts related to his spouse\u2019s employer or its subsidiaries. The document does not name which company McIntosh\u2019s spouse worked for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All state governments have strict rules regarding how officials interact with vendors and deal with vendor contracts. Several CIOs in other states have told StateScoop they must decline or report even the smallest gifts from vendor representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian Berkey, an associate professor of legal studies and business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School, told StateScoop that organizations vary widely in how their rules align with just ethics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSometimes people who are adopting the rules are motivated by genuine concern that rules that are well-justified and are adopted and followed,\u201d Berkey said. \u201cBut other times it\u2019s more for PR or pressure that comes from the fact that other similar organizations have rules that look a certain way and a particular organization doesn\u2019t want to look like they\u2019re adopting laxer rules about something of ethical significance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berkey, who earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, said that although he didn\u2019t know anything about McIntosh\u2019s case, it did not sound like a case of deeper corruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf it really was just an oversight, and he was going through the motions, not really thinking about it, just did this because it was something that seemed fairly routine and then later realized it was this conflict of interest and self-reported it, that kind of does seem like the sort of case where he failed to satisfy a responsibility he had in the job, but didn\u2019t do it maliciously,\u201d Berkey said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several provisions in McIntosh\u2019s agreement indicate an arrangement in which he would continue working as the state\u2019s top technology official. The Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services declined to confirm whether McIntosh had left his role voluntarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for McIntosh\u2019s punishment, Berkey said he was dubious about the decision to require ethics training, especially since the violations were self-reported, but that a small fine sounded like a reasonable punishment, even if only levied as a deterrent for others who might make similar mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a topic that\u2019s debated pretty extensively in philosophy, not just about fines but any form of punishment,\u201d Berkey said. \u201cWhat are the appropriate grounds not just to justify punishing in the first place, but to determine what an appropriate punishment is in various cases? It\u2019s pretty widely agreed that deterrence is among the legitimate purposes so long as punishment is being applied fairly in response to violations of rules that people are aware of or should be aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After 16 months in the role, Joe McIntosh is no longer Oklahoma\u2019s chief information officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":39397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_grayscale_images":true,"grayscale_contrast":0,"sponsored_content":false,"display_author_bio":true,"story_type":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4677],"tags":[76,177,2517,17864,17935,25194,25195],"people":[],"special-report":[],"authors":[4696],"class_list":["post-67641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state","tag-vendors","tag-oklahoma","tag-contracts","tag-joe-mcintosh","tag-chief-information-officer","tag-ethics-settlement","tag-ethics-violations","author-colin-wood"],"yoast_head":"\nOklahoma\u2019s 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