North Kingstown, population 26,000, is on the cutting edge when it comes to using technology to improve government services and operations. And town leaders are quick to credit Jason Albuquerque as the reason.
Albuquerque is the town’s director of information technology. Since 2008, the town has received three annual awards from the Public Technology Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes IT in government.
Albuquerque joined the North Kingstown IT department in late 2003 and was promoted to director in 2006. He received his initial IT training in the military. After attending the U.S. Marine Corps Communication-Electronics School in California, he went on to serve in the Direct Air Support Center.
Albuquerque was more than prepared for the demands of military training by his father, Antonio.
“I have always said that Parris Island (USMC) was easy compared to my first drill instructor, my dad,” he wrote in his 40 Under Forty application.
After seven years in the military, he went to work as a technical services engineer for a Florida company before coming to North Kingstown. Since then, the town has become the first in the state to use video streaming of board and commission meetings to enhance open government.
The town’s IT department also handles technology issues for the town of Exeter, where Albuquerque lives, under an agreement that marks another first for the state.
He sees technology as a way to increase public officials’ accountability to voters and citizens’ involvement in the way their government functions.
“My goal as a technology executive in the government arena is to push the boundaries of information technology to set a standard of transparency and accountability in the public sector,” Albuquerque wrote.
It’s a worthy goal the New England Institute of Technology graduate is well on his way to meeting. •
