John P. Gillispie
Chief Operation Officer
Information Technology Enterprises

John P. Gillispie brings more than 20 years of private-sector telecommunications and information technology management experience to his role as Executive Director of the Iowa Communications Network (ICN). He was appointed to that position by the Iowa Telecommunications and Technology Commission (ITTC) in December, 2002. Shortly after accepting that appointment, he was also asked to serve as Chief Operating Officer of the state’s technology arm, the Information Technology Enterprise (ITE) of the Iowa Department of Administrative Services (DAS).

At the helm of Iowa state government’s two most valuable technology operations, Gillispie oversees systems that touch thousands of Iowans every day. Students in rural Iowa communities share teachers over the ICN and have high-speed access to the Internet. State government workers are connected over an ITE network, their telephone calls and Internet access routed over the state’s fiber optic network. The official Iowa website logged more than 10 million total hits in December, 2003, alone.

Gillispie says the driving force behind his work is the desire to meet customer needs, improve system performance, and deploy effective technology solutions to business challenges. He encourages employees to find synergies among people and systems, whether the solution is e-government or more shared programming over the ICN.

Gillispie acquired his technology expertise from the ground up. He started work as a programmer analyst at an Oklahoma-based energy and telecommunications giant, where he rose through the ranks to hold national operations responsibilities for the company’s fiber optic network infrastructure business services.

He has studied while he worked. Gillispie has an Associate of Arts degree in Accounting and Business Administration from Triton College in River Grove, IL; a Bachelor of Science degree in business data processing from Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri; and a Masters of Business Administration degree from Oklahoma State University, who named him Outstanding Former Student in 1994.