Brandon L. Bowers has been appointed Chief Technology Officer of the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts. Bowers has previously served as the Deputy Director, Data Center Services at the Strategic Technology Solutions for the State of Tennessee and Director of Production Support Services for the Tennessee Department of Health.
“Technological innovation is crucial to every business - but certainly to the entire court system as well. We are grateful to have someone with both public and private experience, who can continue to lead us in the digital age,” said AOC Director Deborah Taylor Tate. “The AOC has undertaken several historic leaps- such as the first General Sessions Data Repository in Tennessee history- and we look forward to Brandon’s leadership and expertise to further efficiency, transparency and accessibility for other branches and indeed all Tennesseans.”
Bowers will oversee four departments within the technology division of the AOC: the Office of Project Management, the Office of Statistical Analysis, the Office of Application Support, and the Office of Networks, Engineering and Systems. His experience includes: infrastructure operations; application support; system administration and engineering; project management; security access provisioning; vendor contract management and negotiation; platform support; business and systems analysis; systems and software implementation; data flow and process mapping; data collection and analytics; and resource and capacity planning.
“The work the AOC does touches all 95 counties and is essential to the efficient administration of justice in the state,” Bowers said. “I am very excited to build on the work done recently by the technology division and to continue to develop and implement new infrastructure and applications to streamline and upgrade where we can.”
In addition to his work in state government, Bowers also has more than 15 years of experience in the private sector, including serving as the leader for Datacenter Operations - Service Assurance for Community Health Systems in Franklin.
Under the leadership of Director Tate, the AOC has made significant strides in modernizing and increasing the use of technology in the court system over the past five years. Recently, e-filing has launched in multiple courts, including the appellate court system; the new indigent representation payment system – the AOC Claims and Payment System (ACAP) was created; a new online portal for Rule 31 Mediators was developed; mental health status reporting between local courts and state and federal databases was improved; Tennessee Supreme Court oral arguments are video recorded in all three courthouses; and more court clerks have been brought online to use the Tennessee Court Information System (TnCIS), an automated case management system.
The AOC is currently developing the General Sessions Data Repository, which collect data from county-level courts in Tennessee; a new online data system for capital cases that will capture information from judges, district attorneys, and public defenders; an online dispute resolution system; a court date and information text messaging program; and a significant refresh to TnCIS. Discussions and planning for collecting juvenile court data have also began across multiple state agencies and partners.
Joining Bowers in the Technology Division is new hire Scott Liput, who most recently served as an enterprise solution architect with Strategic Technology Solutions supporting the Tennessee Department of Health. Liput also brings more than 20 years of information technology experience in both the public and private sectors to the AOC. Liput will serve as an IT Systems Architect at the AOC and has extensive experience updating and replacing legacy systems, managing vendor relationships, product development, and project management.
Bowers is a Nashville native and earned his Bachelor of Arts in Management and Human Relations in 2005 from Trevecca Nazarene University. He was certified as a systems engineer by Microsoft in 2001 and completed the Tennessee Government Management Institute in 2017. He lives in Nashville with his wife, two daughters, and dog.
