When Gov. Mark Dayton appointed Carolyn Parnell to be the state’s CIO in 2011, Parnell was tasked with leading a years-long consolidation of government IT operations. This meant seeing her Office of Enterprise Technology workforce climb from 350 to 1,800 after all of the state’s IT operations were gathered under the same umbrella. Since then, Parnell has overseen efforts that have saved the state $17.4 million in two years on the job.