Tamecka McKay is a visionary technology leader with a strong track record in digital transformation, cybersecurity, and public sector innovation. As the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the City of Fort Lauderdale, she has spearheaded major modernization efforts, including cloud migrations, infrastructure upgrades, and digital transformation. With over 25 years of experience, Tamecka has held leadership roles in Broward County Public Schools and the Town of Davie, driving strategic IT initiatives that enhance efficiency and resilience.
Beyond her technical expertise, Tamecka is deeply committed to community engagement and workforce development, advocating for cybersecurity education and tech accessibility for underserved populations. Her leadership philosophy centers on bridging technology with human impact, ensuring that innovation serves both businesses and communities.
A Journey of Grit and Determination
Being a child of high school dropouts with lifelong substance abuse struggles, Tamecka’s highest aspiration as a teenager was just to get through high school. After a field trip to Seton Hall Law School, organized by her guidance counselor, where she saw people who looked like her going to law school, she realized she, too, could dream bigger than just high school.
Unfortunately, after a few years in community college, she had to start a family of her own. Determined not to be another statistic, she took one class at a time while juggling motherhood and family.. Still wanting to go to Law School, Tamecka decided to take a detour and obtain a Microsoft Certification and was offered a help desk support role immediately after with Motorola. She quickly became a top performer with outstanding organizational, communication, and documentation skills, which weren’t as common in the typical technical support person’s tool set.
With business and technology quickly converging, Tamecka’s ability to translate technology to business and demonstrated outcomes propelled her into a team leader, supervisor, and then to the role of manager. Shortly after transitioning from Motorola to a local government agency where she saw firsthand the power of technology to improve quality of life, her love and passion for community and technology were born, and she has never looked back.
“Rising from help desk support to CIO has been a challenging and rewarding journey that I have been extremely fortunate and privileged to travel. It has truly given me a platform to make a difference in the community, fulfilling my passion for service and paving the way for others from backgrounds similar to mine,” sums up Tamecka.
Acing her Role
For Tamecka, the most rewarding aspects of her role as CIO, besides improving the quality of life for the residents through technological solutions, are the enabling of personal growth and professional development of the team members she gets the privilege to lead. When she started the CIO role at the City of Fort Lauderdale, many of her team members were disengaged and checked out. In fact, the ITS department had over 55% staff turnover, 3 CIOs in 3 years, 5 Police IT Managers in 5 years, and several anonymous letters regularly filed with Human Resources. The team was fractured and disconnected. However, through “Servant-Leadership” and a people-first approach, in less than three years, she has seen employee satisfaction improve by 60% and training and professional development up by over 261%. The core team has been intentional about bringing the team together, creating a more inclusive environment, and building trusted relationships with staff.
“We filled the vacant positions and went from the department of ‘no’ to the department where folks are volunteering (unpaid) just to be a part of the magic! We’ve fostered coaching, mentoring, and a collaborative culture, which has transformed the department into a place where people can grow and develop personally and professionally,” shares Tamecka.
Secondly, being a double minority in the tech industry, Tamecka takes great pride in showing others who look like her the possibilities despite stereotypes and presumed roles. Most recently, she has enjoyed challenging the status quo and empowering a resilient team that has made the impossible happen these past few years at the City of Fort Lauderdale. She believes they (technology professionals) have more power than they know to change the world. Most recently, they’ve empowered the administrative staff who previously felt excluded from technology career advancement to implement their first asset management program as well as take a more assertive role in implementing change management for the organization.
“I have been told that they feel heard, seen, appreciated, and valued for the first time and are excited about contributing to the team outside of standard administrative work. I frequently take advantage of opportunities to speak on Women in Tech and how we can all advocate for more diversity in STEM,” says Tamecka.
Leveraging Technology for Smooth City Operations
The City of Fort Lauderdale uses technology to improve efficiency, enhance service delivery, and provide value to the neighborhoods. Through digital transformation, the city has been able to improve the building permitting process, leveraging FIXIT-FTL, a mobile app allowing neighbors to quickly and easily report non-emergency issues like potholes, flooding, and code enforcement issues. One initiative Tamecka is extremely proud of is the leveraging of the GIS Rapid Impact Assessment tool, led by the GIS Team , which was instrumental in expediting the federal emergency declaration, thereby releasing over $30 million in funding to the devastated neighbors after the one-in-a-thousand-year flood. This has only been done once in the nation’s history at the city level.
Lastly, one of the recent community outreach initiatives includes providing cybersecurity training for the seniors and civic associations in partnership with FLPD. This has been an extremely important added value, considering Florida is one of the top states in the nation for fraud against the elderly, according to the FBI.
A second is the City’s 2025 Smart 20 Award-winning Homeless Outreach Community Services Application led by the Data & Digital Services team. This application assists the Homeless Outreach team in tracking and providing social services for some of the vulnerable community members and was recognized at the SmartCities Connect Conference and Expo last month in San Antonio, TX.
A 3rd initiative is leveraging cellular technology to address communication coverage gaps for the City’s first responders in known dead zones around the city. Although this is not the longer-term solution, leveraging this technology has been extremely instrumental in providing communication coverage for the first responders.
Aligning IT Services with City Goals
One of the strategic priorities Tamecka implemented as the city’s first African American CIO was their annual State of ITS address. This event is preceded by an annual business vision survey, which gains insights by understanding the pain points of each of the business units (departments) on an individual basis. This information is then calculated in an algorithm, creating a scorecard which they use for discussion and review, as well as informing the goals and priorities for the next year.
Although they still have a long way to go in achieving IT Service Excellence delivery, Tamecka feels the new collaborative, business-focused, and customer-oriented approach has started transitioning the view of IT from “break-fix” internal service to a strategic business partner driving innovation and efficiency throughout the organization.
Decisions during Crises
Tamecka believes decision-making should be inclusive and informative. In other words, bring the data and your friends! The best decisions are made with access to as much relevant information as possible and as many diverse perspectives as possible. For this to happen, there must be a culture of inclusivity, transparency, and best practices. This doesn’t happen by accident or overnight and takes time, effort, and consistency to create. During the disastrous flood recovery efforts, they held team meetings several times throughout the day, ensuring everyone had a seat at the table and communication was consistent. This not only allowed the team to grow closer together but also to effectively restore city services within days, which would have taken months.
Additional factors included the IT Transformation journey of best practices, industry standards, as well as accountability and fostering collaboration, which had all been lacking before. Lastly, she saw team members step up like never before, which led to career advancement, professional development, and the acknowledgement of the tremendous impact they had when they pulled their resources together as opposed to the previously fractured and siloed culture.
“Although you can never plan for every single scenario, understanding organizational priorities (which we capitalized on by conducted the city’s first Business Impact Analysis immediately after the event) as well as building trust within the team can result in effective crises management even in unprecedented scenarios like the 2023 flood and emergency data center evacuations,” says Tamecka.
Trends Shaping IT in Municipal Services
Going by the current trends, Tamecka foresees AI and Cybersecurity as the focus of the future for municipal services, in addition to the “do more with less” expectation that will always be a theme. As we move into the future, leveraging the power of AI to course correct, predict, and enhance public service, municipal governments will need to prioritize strategic technology investments in both tools and people. Disaster recovery and business continuity will also be critical, considering the threat of climate change and cyberattacks. As our dependencies on technology increase, so will our risks in protecting information and services. Government leaders, she feels, will need to find a balance between acceptable risks and the cost of data protection.
The second trend is partnership. Tamecka’s team has been able to complete monumental achievements in modernizing the city’s aging infrastructure because of the strong partnerships they have with their vendors. AIP US, LLC (aip-us.com) is one of the strong partnerships they have and has assisted them in upgrading the city’s entire fleet of outdated network equipment including the Police Department’s legacy virtual farm in record time. Having partners that understand local government procurement and the flexibility required in meeting public sector needs is crucial. This has allowed Tamecka and her team to reduce the city’s cybersecurity posture and start building the block of leveraging SmartCities technology to improve public services. Local government continues to have limited resources, and as technology becomes more integrated and complex, having a strong network of reliable partners will be key in moving agencies forward.
“We’ve leveraged these partnerships to consolidate 5 disparate data centers, upgrade the aging infrastructure, and improve our cybersecurity posture,” she says.
Staying Ahead of Emerging Technologies
Tamecka regularly participates in several IT communities, including the Florida Local Government Information Systems Association (FLGISA), the CIO Council, the Society of Information Management, and South Florida CIO. Additionally, she volunteers to speak at events, participates on boards, and is a lifelong learner. Finally, she subscribes to several publications and journals to stay in the know.
“Most recently, I attended an event where I had the chance to network with other IT Professionals from all over the world. It is amazing to know that, as far apart and as different as we are, many of our challenges are the same,” she shares.
Advice for Aspiring Professionals
To aspiring IT professionals, Tamecka says:
“Find your Why! This isn’t the most glamorous role, and at times it can be thankless. However, the intrinsic value of being a solution provider to social challenges and the role of enabling people to live happy, healthy, and productive lives are more than what money can buy. I wake up everyday thinking about how I can better serve our community, and that gives me great pride. Considering the ubiquitous nature of technology in our current digital economy, I believe you can find a way to leverage technology in anything you find passion for. Art, Health, Education, Government, Business, Sports, Social Services – they all have technology components and/or opportunities to leverage technology for service enhancement. One recent example that comes to mind is a health organization leveraging AI to flag emergency room visits for potential sex-trafficking victims. Another example is the integration of two separate databases that identified a foster child who’d been placed in a home with a known predator. Lastly, the invention of a special cooler, used to keep vaccinations cold during transport to extremely remote areas, thereby reducing the number of children dying from disease. It is a great time to be a technologist!”
Goals Ahead
The future for the City of Fort Lauderdale will be led by Tamecka’s IT Assistant Director, as she will be transitioning to a new organization later next month. She recommended her as the successor because of her extensive experience and partnership during the IT Transformation, including modernization of the City’s legacy hardware and software. They share the same values and vision for continuing the journey of transforming IT from the break-fix internal service provider to becoming a strategic business partner with community impact by leveraging digital transformation, AI, SmartCities technology, and building a high-performing team acutely aligned with the City of Fort Lauderdale’s priorities.”
🌐 Read the full digital edition now: Driving the Future of Business with Visionary Leadership
