Jennifer Davis, a former attorney for the state Department of Education, is now the first chief privacy officer at the Department of Information Systems.
Davis started work at the Department of Information Systems on Monday at an annual salary of $96,960, department spokesman Janet Clark said Friday. The chief privacy officer post was created under Act 912 of 2017.
Davis served for almost four years with the Department of Education, where she was paid a salary of $73,701 a year, according to the Arkansas Transparency website. She previously worked for the Department of Information Systems assisting the department's general counsel.
Clark said the new position is being filled more than a year after the enactment of the law creating the post because the Department of Information Systems wanted to establish the chief data officer post first and then select a chief privacy officer. In August, Richard Wang, executive director of the Institute for Chief Data Officers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was appointed as chief data officer.
Thirteen people applied for the chief privacy officer job before Davis was hired, Clark said.
Davis said her goal in her new job "is to work with other state agencies to establish a robust data privacy program that will provide a more efficient response to the needs of the citizens of Arkansas.
"I look forward to understanding the unique needs and particular circumstances of each agency and collaborating with them to resolve any legal or analytical challenges of an enterprise privacy solution," she said in a news release.
Metro on 06/24/2018