Raja Paidipalli is the Chief Data Officer for the State of Maine (SOM), where he leads the State's Data Management and Governance Practice (DMGP). He is responsible for advancing the State of Maine's enterprise data capabilities by developing data strategy, establishing governance frameworks, strengthening data stewardship, and enabling secure, trusted, and data driven decision making across state government.
With more than 20 years of leadership experience in enterprise data, analytics, and information management, Raja has led transformational initiatives across multiple industries. Prior to joining the State of Maine in 2024, he established Enterprise Data Offices from the ground up, implemented enterprise-wide data governance, analytics, and regulatory programs, and built high-performing teams that fostered cultures of accountability, transparency, and collaboration.
Raja's expertise includes enterprise data strategy, data governance, analytics, data quality, master data management, sensitive data management, and AI adoption. He is recognized for aligning business priorities with modern data practices to improve organizational performance, manage risk, and unlock the strategic value of data.
Passionate about modernizing government through data, Raja is committed to helping Maine's executive agencies leverage data as a strategic asset to enhance public services, improve operational efficiency, and support informed, evidence-based decision making.
Raja holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) and a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science and Engineering.
In May 2022, Governor Mills signed Public Law Chapter 717, establishing a data governance program. During the 131st Legislature, the law was amended by PL 2023 c. 581 in PDF to promote consistent collection of racial and ethnic demographic data to promote equity through informed data-driven decision making in future state policy and law. Data Governance refers to policies relating to access and use of data, while Data Management includes the processes, tools, and enabling technology. To reflect this, the term “Data Governance Program” was expanded to the more comprehensive “Data Management and Governance Practice.”
At its core, the Data Management and Governance Practice (DMGP) is the path for how the State of Maine will modernize the way agencies think about, collect, track, share, use and record data. Creating an environment wherein live data can be safely and securely shared between State agencies and with the public to improve policies, programs and services for the people of Maine through, as examples, racial impact statements, disparate impact statements, data-driven decision making, financial analysis, and grant applications. DMGP will provide coordination for data collection, sharing, and usage across all state agencies through a collaborative process. DMGP will create state-wide policies on data usage, procedures for collecting and sharing data, and ongoing enforcement of established practices; standardize data formats, data categories and technology capabilities across agencies and systems; improve overall data quality; and ensure data collection practices align with best practice privacy requirements.
This practice will help us find out: where each agency is collecting their data; what kind of data each agency is collecting, including a very specific list identified by Legislators; and, if those systems the State is using to collect that data are out of date and will need to be replaced. Ultimately, as disparate data systems and data align and interact, State government will be able to consistently and more timely contribute quality data that will inform and promote policies, practices and services for our State of Maine constituents.
Contact Information: DataManagementandGovernancePractice@maine.gov