Hassan Janjua began his tenure as the inaugural Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Newport News, Va., in February 2026. Transitioning from a senior IT management role at Los Angeles County, Janjua is tasked with shaping the city’s IT strategy to be future-ready. A primary pillar of his strategy is a $6 million investment in cybersecurity, specifically targeting ransomware protection for endpoints. This focus on security is driven by data showing that state and local governments faced an average recovery cost of $2.83 million per ransomware incident in 2024. Additionally, the city is prioritizing disaster resilience and system redundancy due to its coastal geography.

Workforce development is another core objective for Janjua, who recently authored a book on employee upskilling. To facilitate this in Newport News, the city has provided staff access to Udemy (an online learning platform) and is implementing individual development plans for supervisors. Janjua has requested a 50 percent increase in the employee training budget for the upcoming year to improve project delivery and infrastructure outcomes. Despite the significant population difference—Newport News has 183,230 residents compared to Los Angeles County’s 9.69 million—Janjua stated that local governments face similar operational challenges.

To foster regional IT collaboration, Janjua joined the 757CIO group, which consists of area leaders who will meet quarterly to discuss shared technology hurdles. His strategy for emerging technology centers on an “AI factory,” a secure testing ecosystem designed to evaluate AI tools before wider implementation. As part of this, the city is developing an assessment tool to score potential AI use cases based on their projected return on investment. This framework is intended to allow city officials to test and, if necessary, fail securely in a controlled environment to ensure data security and prevent post-implementation failures.

Hassan Janjua began his tenure as the inaugural Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Newport News, Va., in February 2026. Transitioning from a senior IT management role at Los Angeles County, Janjua is tasked with shaping the city’s IT strategy to be future-ready. A primary pillar of his strategy is a $6 million investment in cybersecurity, specifically targeting ransomware protection for endpoints. This focus on security is driven by data showing that state and local governments faced an average recovery cost of $2.83 million per ransomware incident in 2024. Additionally, the city is prioritizing disaster resilience and system redundancy due to its coastal geography.

Workforce development is another core objective for Janjua, who recently authored a book on employee upskilling. To facilitate this in Newport News, the city has provided staff access to Udemy (an online learning platform) and is implementing individual development plans for supervisors. Janjua has requested a 50 percent increase in the employee training budget for the upcoming year to improve project delivery and infrastructure outcomes. Despite the significant population difference—Newport News has 183,230 residents compared to Los Angeles County’s 9.69 million—Janjua stated that local governments face similar operational challenges.

To foster regional IT collaboration, Janjua joined the 757CIO group, which consists of area leaders who will meet quarterly to discuss shared technology hurdles. His strategy for emerging technology centers on an “AI factory,” a secure testing ecosystem designed to evaluate AI tools before wider implementation. As part of this, the city is developing an assessment tool to score potential AI use cases based on their projected return on investment. This framework is intended to allow city officials to test and, if necessary, fail securely in a controlled environment to ensure data security and prevent post-implementation failures.