Allison Howard

Allison Howard serves as a Government Official within the State of North Carolina’s Statewide IT Procurement Office, where she plays a pivotal role in executing the agency’s mission to centralize and optimize the acquisition of information technology services across state government. Her responsibilities include managing the end-to-end procurement lifecycle for specialized IT professional services, ensuring alignment with cybersecurity standards, scalability requirements, and operational resilience goals. She primarily oversees sole-source and competitive acquisitions under the Other Computer Related Services category, focusing on solutions that enhance threat detection, incident response, and secure digital infrastructure for critical state functions. Howard maintains strategic relationships with a broad spectrum of IT service providers, including systems integrators, cybersecurity consultants, cloud infrastructure specialists, and managed service firms. While no single contractor dominates her portfolio, she consistently engages vendors with proven expertise in federal and state compliance frameworks such as NIST SP 800-53, CMMC, and NC State IT Security Policies. Her contracting approach emphasizes performance-based outcomes, clear SLAs, and vendor accountability through rigorous evaluation criteria and post-award monitoring. Howard’s procurement patterns reflect a strong preference for open competition, with 100% of her acquisitions conducted without set-aside designations. This underscores a focus on technical merit and capability over socioeconomic classifications, though she remains open to small business participation when vendors meet stringent performance and compliance benchmarks. Her approach prioritizes mission-critical outcomes over socioeconomic targets, aligning with the agency’s broader objective of securing high-assurance IT capabilities. Her primary procurement focus is on NAICS 541519 — Other Computer Related Services — encompassing cybersecurity assessments, penetration testing, IT modernization consulting, DevSecOps implementation, and cloud migration services. She specializes in acquiring technical expertise to support state-wide digital transformation initiatives, particularly in areas requiring deep knowledge of public-sector compliance, infrastructure hardening, and risk mitigation strategies.