What Enterprise CIOs Can Learn From the Public Sector on AI Spending
CIO Dive, Wednesday, June 24th, 2026
New York State CIO Dru Rai urges enterprises to adopt public-sector AI budget discipline and a fail-fast mindset.
New York State CIO Dru Rai advocates a try-and-fail-fast strategy to control AI budgets by abandoning underperforming pilots early.
Public sector cost constraints foster creative problem-solving, since less money forces smarter use of it.
Rai prefers sustainable, cheaper AI models over speed-to-market, saying he is happy to be second.
Safety and privacy must accompany productivity gains to protect citizen data.
Enterprise AI budgets face growing scrutiny as usage-based pricing makes budget discipline essential for ROI.