As expected, the roughly 200 attendees at last week’s virtual California Department of Technology (CDT) Vendor Forum had questions about various aspects of state IT.
CDT officials had answers and built time to respond into the two-hour event. They fielded queries on everything from procurement to legislation to federal funding. Among the takeaways:
Initiative at California State Controller’s Office: Asked whether the 2022 Fiscal Year will see a “major push” from SCO on a payroll project, Rick Klau, state chief technology innovation officer and deputy director of CDT’s Office of Enterprise Technology, said Thursday that it is “not necessarily tied to the fiscal year,” but described it as an “ongoing effort.” In short, he said, “Yes.” CalHR and SCO are already teamed up to do oversight, Klau said, indicating there’s a continuing effort to focus on that and move it forward. However, it’s unclear when the work will yield a request for proposal.
FedRAMP pervasiveness: The Department of General Services (DGS) has extended the current cloud contracts to June 14, 2022, a procurement official told those assembled during presentations. A viewer wondered about FedRAMP implications for software-as-a-service products – and whether FedRAMP will become a mandatory requirement for all cloud solutions. Scott MacDonald, state deputy chief technology officer, said the cloud contracts currently are for infrastructure as a service and platform as a service, and “Software as a service is outside the scope of those projects and we have different terms and conditions.”
“The way those have been purchased currently, distributed DGS contracts, the cloud contract has been a separate vehicle. We do not have a requirement, although we highly recommend FedRAMP-type services for off-prem usage and it’s primarily based on data classification,” said MacDonald, who is part of CDT’s Office of Technology Services.
Federal money allocated for cybersecurity outside of the American Rescue Plan Act: A viewer wondered about that funding and whether CDT or another entity controls those dollars. State Chief Information Officer Amy Tong, who is also CDT director, said it’s most likely that anything cybersecurity-related would be handled via the California Cybersecurity Integration Center, the likely central point, in which CDT and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services are co-leads. Cybersecurity remains a top priority for officials. Deputy State CIO Russ Nichols said this area continues to “change with the administration,” so officials are watching it closely. The California Department of Finance (DoF), Nichols said, is not necessarily reviewing those funding opportunities “department by department” as there are “too many intricacies.”
“Really, it’s when we become aware of ... the opportunity and we can match up the need with the funding availability, then we work with Finance to actually put in the application or whatever process, to bring those funds into California,” Nichols said, noting there’s “no clear single answer.”
Digital divide: Asked whether considerations are being made to use wired and wireless technologies when considering solutions to close the digital divide, Scott Adams, CDT’s deputy director of broadband and digital literacy, said yes, indicating the Broadband Action Plan 2020, California Broadband for All, offers “some flexibility on the last-mile portion to consider appropriate technologies.” On the area of tech neutrality, he referred the audience to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order No. 73-20, which first called for creating the broadband plan last August, highlighting lessons learned from demand during the pandemic and “that the focus potentially is open to alternative technologies but places an emphasis on the speeds and capacity for current and future uses.”
