The California gov tech leaders’ work to change how services were accessed during the pandemic, while continuing ongoing modernizations, earned them their places among Government Technology magazine’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers of 2021.
“STO is in the very early stage of digital transformation as many of our business processes are still paper-based. … Like many organizations during this time, we are all working in a very fluid environment that requires us to pivot quickly to meet the demand of the situation,” says David Duarte, chief information officer at the State Treasurer’s Office.
“I will be continuing a CHHS cybersecurity strategic assessment of all CHHS departments with a focus on moving towards a more coordinated/aligned approach across all CHHS departments and offices,” says Lloyd Indig, agency information security officer at the California Health and Human Services Agency.
Techwire is pleased to welcome Gartner to the Techwire family. One of the world’s top research and advisory companies and an S&P 500 member, Gartner provides vital insight, advice and tools to enable business and technology leaders to achieve mission-critical priorities. CIOs and senior IT leaders at corporations and government agencies, leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, supply chain and digital marketing professionals, and technology investors rely on Gartner, the partner to clients at more than 10,000 enterprises. For more information, visit gartner.com or contact Eugene M. Martinez.
Techwire is pleased to welcome Qlik Tech to the Techwire family. Qlik’s mission centers on empowering people in meaningful discoveries capable of driving real change. Its business intelligence solutions offer end-to-end, real-time data integration and an analytics cloud platform capable of closing any gaps between data, insights and action. The Pennsylvania-based company’s vision is for a data-literate world, where decision-making can be enhanced and problems solved via data and analytics. Qlik has more than 50,000 customers globally and works in more than 100 nations. For more information, visit qlik.com or contact Scott Morris, Field Sales Director, Public Sector, SLED WEST.
“We need to build on our successes achieved during the pandemic, continue to be flexible and further expand our technology capabilities and civic responsibilities in the challenging years ahead. Over the past year, we’ve given our residents stability due to our ability to go virtual in a short amount of time,” says Hong Sae, chief information officer for the city of Roseville.
Techwire is pleased to welcome Zerto to the Techwire family. Zerto enables customers to speed up their IT transformations via a single scalable platform for cloud data management and protection. The industry leader’s software-only platform moves past the risks of modernization and cloud adoption to provide constant data protection that brings together disaster recovery, backup and data mobility. Used by more than 8,000 customers around the world, Zerto’s technology powers offerings for Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure and many others. For more information, visit zerto.com or contact David Fernandez.
“When you look at contracting, the ability to piggyback on, whether it’s cloud contracts, data center, innovation, training, we really need to have a strong partnership with the states, and we want that badly,” said Los Angeles County Chief Information Officer Bill Kehoe.
“In my opinion, the value of digital transformation is most evident when we create meaningful efficiencies, increase transparency and improve the user experience. As with many agencies in the state, CALPIA is continually transforming. I do not anticipate a day where we say we are finished; only a day where we ask ourselves what we’re going to tackle next,” says Suzie Changus, CIO for the California Prison Industry Authority.
Techwire is pleased to welcome Yubico to the Techwire family. Palo Alto-based Yubico helps government and private-sector entities mitigate cybersecurity risk by securing access to critical business and customer data via high-assurance multifactor authentication with the YubiKey. The YubiKey offers strong hardware protection across multiple IT systems and online services. The company’s YubiHSM, a portable hardware security module, safeguards sensitive data in servers. Yubico is also a leading contributor to the FIDO2, WebAuthn and FIDO Universal 2nd Factor open authentication standards. For more information, visit yubico.com or contact Michael Santini, State and Local West lead.
Executive appointments and promotions, a large COVID-19 contract award, and a couple of state spending roundups were among the stories that made headlines last week in Techwire.
Techwire is pleased to welcome Effectual to the Techwire family. Effectual, an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, holding the VMware Master Services Competency in VMware Cloud on AWS, is a modern, cloud-first managed and professional services company that works with commercial enterprises and the public sector to enable modernization and mitigate risk. Effectual provides the experience and expertise to procure, configure and execute complex cloud deployments, data center migrations and modernization initiatives. Effectual holds the exclusive contract to procure Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), ORock Technologies, and MIS Sciences Clouds for the California Department of Technology and is listed on the CMAS, FBI IT Triple S, DOJ ITSS-4, 4TNG, GSA IT-70, CIO-SP3, Navy SeaPort-NxG, Texas DIR, USAF LevelUp, and NMITS contracts. Effectual’s leadership team has a long history of delivering services to the public sector. The company acquired JHC Technology in January 2020. For more information about Effectual, go to effectual.com or contact Carl Pirie.
“Probably the biggest challenge right now is, the security is ever-changing and very dynamic. It’s my job to utilize all the available funds that we have and the staff that we have and the technology to stay on top of any and all potential vulnerabilities within the agency,” says Mike Marshall, agency information security officer for the California Environmental Protection Agency.
The Project Management Leadership Academy is one of four professional training programs offered by the California Department of Technology for public-sector employees.
“There may be another major evolution like the agricultural or industrial or informational ages, but I think in general, transformation is a forever process. That’s a part of my role to act as the counselor and try to help people accommodate change in their work lives,” says Brent Coe, chief information officer at the California Tahoe Conservancy.
Techwire is pleased to welcome Tek Yantra to the Techwire family. Folsom-based Tek Yantra is an IT consulting and software development company that focuses on leveraging open source software development and implementation. It offers consulting services on open source software, enabling clients to reduce their costs while collaborating. Tek Yantra’s offerings include software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service solutions in the cloud. Last year, the company began working with the California Department of Technology, providing services including site reliability engineering. For information, visit tekyantra.com.
Techwire is pleased to welcome Delphix to the Techwire family. Delphix is an industry leader in programmable data infrastructure and automates what can be the biggest constraint in digital transformation programs — the data. Its multi-cloud data platform enables state and local government to modernize legacy apps 20 percent faster and migrate to the cloud 30 percent faster, while still complying with national and international privacy, health and economic standards. The Delphix Data Platform offers advantages including maximum coverage for high change rates, data immutability, open box data testing and validation, and air gap data isolation. For more information visit delphix.com or contact Jenny Lee.
“The role of the CIO has moved from being primarily technical to one that requires an understanding of the business requirements of the department and prioritizes our customer needs. Therefore, we are constantly adapting to meet their needs and developing forward-looking technology solutions,” says Scott Capulong, chief information officer at the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration.
On its blog, the California Department of Technology notes registration has opened for CyberStart America, formerly Girls Go CyberStart but now expanded to include high school boys and members of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. CDT Director Amy Tong, the state CIO, will serve as a sponsor for the state.
Techwire is pleased to welcome Altair Knowledge Works to the Techwire family. Altair works with more than 35 state departments and delivers the tools government needs to optimize operations. It offers automated self-service data preparation solutions capable of extracting data from unstructured, legacy-generated formats like PDF or txt. Altair also creates predictive and prescriptive analytic models that don’t require coding or advanced Excel skills. School districts in San Bernardino, Del Norte, Humboldt, Inyo, Mono and San Mateo counties use its solutions in areas including payroll and human resources, enabling employees to focus on higher-value tasks. For more information visit altair.com or contact Dave Lewis.
Techwire is pleased to welcome SailPoint to the Techwire family. SailPoint, focused on identity security for the cloud enterprise, works to protect government agencies from the inherent risk that comes with providing technology access across today’s diverse and remote workforce. Its identity security solutions secure and enable thousands of organizations worldwide, giving customers visibility into the entirety of their digital workforce, ensuring that each worker has the right access to do their job. With SailPoint as foundational to the security of their organization, customers can provision access with confidence, protect business assets at scale and ensure compliance with certainty. For more information about SailPoint, go to sailpoint.com or contact Richard Rossman.
“I would say the role of CISO has evolved from being an IT-centered role to … definitely a strategic leadership function for most organizations,” says Jake Margolis, chief information security officer at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
Techwire is pleased to welcome UKG to the Techwire family. UKG, built from a merger that created one of the largest cloud companies in the world, believes organizations succeed when they focus on their people. As a leading global provider of HCM, payroll, HR service delivery, and workforce management solutions, UKG helps tens of thousands of organizations across geographies and in every industry drive better business outcomes, improve HR effectiveness, streamline payroll, and make work a more connected experience for everyone. UKG has earned numerous awards for its culture, products and services, including consecutive years on Fortune’s "100 Best Companies to Work For" list. For more information, contact Chad Kapler.
Techwire is pleased to welcome Whyline to the Techwire family. Whyline is a trusted partner of large government agencies, banks, hospitals, retailers and school systems. With a mobile application and cloud-based software, organizations use Whyline to empower their customers by letting them schedule visits, jump the line and be notified when to arrive. This is achieved by an omnichannel suite of products where the customer journey is optimized and operational costs are minimized. The company states: “Whyline is a completely new take on old-style queuing systems that utilizes cloud computing. Our solution virtualizes the entire queuing process for companies and governments by allowing their customers to see the live wait-times for their destination of choice and enter the line remotely from any location.” For more information, visit whyline.com or contact Michael Twersky.
“I would say just very simply that digital transformation, to me, is solving business problems using technology as an enabler. I don’t want ‘digital transformation’ to be a buzzword that doesn’t have any action behind it,” says Chief Information Officer Bill Kehoe.
Techwire is pleased to welcome Vantiq to the Techwire family. Vantiq’s software development and deployment platform lets customers construct next-gen apps that aggregate real-world data and real-time events. This agile development environment enables the creation of complex apps in just weeks with minimal coding that fully utilize artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and edge computing. Walnut Creek-based Vantiq powers a wide variety of apps for smart cities and smart buildings and in industries including telecom and health care. For more information, visit vantiq.com or contact David Sprinzen.
Cathilea Robinett, president of the Folsom-based media and research company, will take over as chief executive officer. Company founder Dennis McKenna, who had held the CEO role, will take the role of executive chairman of the company.
Kirby Brady, director of the Performance and Analytics Department since joining the city a year ago, will keep that role in addition to her new position, according to Mayor Todd Gloria.
“Given the whole environment, we decided to take a step back and much more closely align our work with the overall organization; and rather than do a strategic plan, we said, ‘These are our priorities for the next two years until we can realign with the next CalPERS strategic plan,’” says Chief Information Officer Christian Farland.
