Kreitzer doesn't have an IT background, but she knows Alaska state government intimately, having worked for the state for 26 years. She began her career in 1983 when she got a job in the state legislature as a secretary. In the 1990s, she worked for then-State Senator Loren Leman. When Leman was elected lieutenant governor in 2002, he named Kreitzer his chief of staff. She held that position until Governor Palin named her CIO and put her in charge of the Department of Administration.

Amanda Brady caught up with Kreitzer just before the CIO went on vacation to go on her annual spring bear hunt. ("They're good eating in the spring, but they're not good eating in the fall," says Kreitzer.) She discussed the challenges she faces trying to re-build ETS's credibility, her approach to hiring, and her relationship with the boss, Governor Palin.

: One of the difficulties that I recognized right away was that this department had had four commissioners in four years and four ETS directors in that same time span. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that that sets up a situation where you have no core political leadership to say 'This is the direction we are going in and lets all move there together.' Because of that, other department heads had felt like ETS was not meeting their needs, so they were going off and doing their own thing regardless of what the chief information officer, the former commissioner and Department of Administration might have to say about it. I completely understand why other departments said, 'We got other stuff to do and we don't have time to listen to what ETS wants to do. We see them as a barrier to what we want to achieve.'

That was the biggest thing, the toughest thing I faced as a chief information officer-recognizing that a lot had happened because of an absence of leadership. ETS had become an entity that set such unrealistic deadlines that nobody was listening to them anymore. I wasn't listening to them. I was sitting in the lieutenant governor's office seeing these emails from ETS saying, 'As of this date we are going to roll something out.' That day would come and go and there would be a new deadline and that deadline would come and go.