John Thomas Flynn is a co-founder and partner with Flynn, Kossick & Associates, Inc. (FK&A), the premier strategic marketing, business development, education and training, and executive staffing organization serving the public sector IT vendor community from its headquarters in Sacramento, California. FK&A is dedicated to serving both business and government with a focus on information technology investment, management, procurement and oversight.

For more than a decade, he has been at the center of the renaissance to upgrade the public sector’s management and utilization of its information technology assets. As the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ first Chief Information Officer (CIO) appointed by Governor Bill Weld in 1994, he became arguably the first state CIO in the U.S. That successful stint in Massachusetts was recognized nationally and he was rewarded with his appointment to the most prestigious and challenging CIO job in state government when he became the State of California’s first CIO appointed by Governor Pete Wilson in 1995. For over 6 years he served as an officer in NASCIO, the association which represents state CIO’s, and in 1997 he was elected their President. He was an advisor to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California Performance Review team, and served on the California State CIO Clark Kelso's Peer Review Board. In the summer of 2006, he created the nation’s first live video Webcast program on public sector technology issues, the wildly successful program entitled Technology Leadership Today.

Since 1994 he has been a member of the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) Information Technology Advisory Board where has become familiar with the major issues and challenges facing federal agencies regarding CIO organization and governance and their utilization of technology. He also served as a member of GAO’s Working Group with the Rockefeller Institute on welfare reform’s impact on state computer systems.

Prior to his state service he served in White House-appointed positions in two Presidential Administrations (Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.) In addition to his public service, he has nearly two decades of private sector experience in systems integration and information technology marketing fields. He is an acknowledged leader and visionary who has written and spoken extensively on effective government operations, and government’s ability and capacity to successfully manage its information technology assets.

In a special Congressional election in Sacramento in early 2005, Mr. Flynn finished first among the five Republican candidates vying for the seat, receiving 41% of the votes cast for Republican candidates. This was not enough to outdistance Democrat Doris Matsui, widow of the incumbent, who received greater than 50% of the vote, thereby avoiding a runoff election against him.

He was a member of the Board of Advisors of the Fisher Center for Management and Information Technology, Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He was appointed in 1999 and continues to serve on the Board of Advisors of California State University, Sacramento’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. He was a member of the Government Advisory Board of INPUT, a leading global database and analytical research provider. He has also served on the board of directors of several start-up technology firms in northern California, and also on the board of directors of the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra. Finally, he is a volunteer reader for the Sacramento Society for the Blind. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Boston College; studied economics and international relations at the University of Vienna, Austria; and has an MBA from The American University in Washington, DC.