In local government, cybersecurity is less about lofty aspirations and more about leveraging opportunities. It competes for limited resources, often against the urgent needs of the community: roads, utilities, and emergency services. Seguin, TX, is a perfect example. A 35% population surge in just five years has driven nonstop demand for new infrastructure and services, forcing hard trade-offs and, at times, resourceful interim solutions. In this environment, cyber risk goes beyond technical challenges and becomes a byproduct of balancing civic priorities.

Shane McDaniel is the Chief Information Officer for the City of Seguin. With nearly 30 years of experience, a former presidency at the Texas Association of Governmental IT Managers, and a background that spans municipal government, the U.S. intelligence community at the National Reconnaissance Office, and private industry at Dell, his perspective is grounded in constraint. His view is simple and hard-earned: to understand how local governments modernize, you first have to understand the limits they work within.

"In municipal government, we’re always playing catch-up. We’re trying to evolve and modernize to the best of our ability, but we always have competing challenges with essential citizen services like police and fire. You do the best you can with what you’ve got," says McDaniel. Those competing challenges turn long-term plans into living documents. Due to the fluid nature of the annual budget, where every department must justify priorities, McDaniel's approach is both visionary and opportunistic.

• See what sticks: "My budget philosophy is to throw it all against the wall and see what sticks," he says. "We have a five-year roadmap, but it changes every year; something at the top of the list might get bumped down to number ten. Every year, all 25 city departments go to bat for projects, and some just don't make the cut because we can't financially do it. We certainly understand that."

• Tech to Texas: Winning budget requests, McDaniel says, comes down to having "ammunition." That often means pairing external supporting documentation, such as a federal audit, with long-term internal data to give known problems enough weight to move. "We knew these upgrades needed to be done anyway, but the audit gave us the ammunition to go to city management and say 'this has to happen.'" At the same time, he builds his own internal case over years of tracking infrastructure data. "Data tells a story, but I don’t bring it to the board in raw form. I translate it into Texas-speak," turning long-term metrics into decisions that actually get approved.

• Bubble-gum backups: Seguin’s backup infrastructure shows how this approach works in practice. For years, the city relied on what McDaniel calls a "bubble-gum" solution: a low-cost, in-house backup system that worked well enough to survive competing priorities, even after it was flagged in a DHS audit. "With all the competing financial needs we have, replacing it was never a high enough priority because we found a workaround," he recalls. When a federal grant finally became available, the city moved quickly, replacing the stopgap with a modern platform and moving toward a more resilient, AI-driven data strategy.

But the operating model isn’t just about audits and grants; it’s built on people. In a relationship-driven culture, trust functions as a vital operational asset, influencing everything from system upgrades to hiring philosophy.

• Lone star, group effort: For McDaniel, relationships are what make progress possible. "It’s not what you know, it’s who you know," he says, a reality he sees play out daily in Texas local government. "We’re based on those old-fashioned values. It’s just how we operate." In that environment, cybersecurity advances the same way everything else does: through trust, credibility, and ongoing conversations, where getting things done depends as much on relationships as it does on technology.

• Social engineering: McDaniel builds his team around that reality. "I’ve intentionally hired people who are gregarious and communicative, even if they didn’t have all the technical experience you might want," he says. "I’ve built a team of extroverts, which is rare in the IT world, because I want them to go out and build relationships across the city."

• Make some noise: For McDaniel, media visibility is an extension of relationship building. Podcasts, articles, and awards create familiarity and trust, opening doors long before a contract is ever discussed. "We’re a noisy, media-friendly city, and it’s probably saved our taxpayers a good million dollars in innovation," he notes. Vendors want to work with Seguin because they know the partnership goes beyond a transaction. "It’s a win-win for my community."

As a past president of the Texas Association of Governmental IT Managers (TAGITM), McDaniel cultivated a network of peers across the state and nation, a resource he considers invaluable in an environment that often prizes collaboration over competition. That collaborative spirit is bolstered by new state-level initiatives, such as the Texas Cyber Command, which is designed to provide more centralized resources to local governments. "I view my peers in other cities as an extension of staff," says McDaniel. "If another city calls me, I’m going to call them back. We benefit by helping one another."

What Seguin shows is that municipal cybersecurity isn’t built through grand transformations. It’s built through knowing when to push and when to wait. Progress comes from relationships, credibility, and the ability to turn small wins into momentum. In a world of fixed budgets and growing risk, success isn’t about doing everything at once. "You stay hungry, you stay vigilant, and you keep moving things forward the best way you can," McDaniel concludes.