California earned a B+ grade from the Center for Digital Government* (CDG) in its 2022 Digital States Survey, which the Center uses to track states’ technology usage to help improve service delivery, increase capacity, streamline operations and achieve IT priorities.
Designed to spotlight the best or emerging technology practices that serve as models and/or can be shared, the survey evaluates responses from states using criteria that include actions taken to support their state priorities and policies to improve their operations or services. The 2022 awards ceremony will be Sunday during the National Association of State Chief Information Officers annual conference in Louisville, Ky. Here’s more on California’s achievements highlighted in the survey:
- Cybersecurity: It’s been one year since Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office published Cal-Secure. The office called the publication the state’s “first multiyear cybersecurity road map.” It looks at “people, process and technology,” as well as at any shortfalls or concerns. “The technology piece, that’s the most important piece,” state Chief Information Security Officer Vitaliy Panych said during a vendor event in 2020.
- Broadband: California has been making a concerted effort to improve high-speed Internet availability statewide, and elected officials have approved spending a historic $6 billion on broadband infrastructure over three fiscal years starting in FY 2021-2022. This includes $4.3 billion in federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act fiscal relief funds. In August and in September, the California Department of Transportation has released requests for qualifications from companies capable, generally, of providing middle-mile construction services.
“We are in the planning phase, so hopefully, going into construction and we’re going to be putting thousands of miles of middle-mile fiber-optic cable up and down the state,” state Chief Information Officer Liana Bailey-Crimmins, who is also the director of the California Department of Technology, told attendees Thursday at the California Digital Government Summit* in Sacramento. The first project, she said, should begin in Poway, in San Diego County, in “just a few weeks.” - New leadership: Bailey-Crimmins, a veteran state executive and then-state chief technology officer, was named state CIO and director of the California Department of Technology (CDT) in June, following the elevation of former state CIO Amy Tong to director of the Office of Digital Innovation (ODI) in December; and to secretary of the California Government Operations Agency (GovOps) in February.
- Strategy, technology: CDT published Vision 2023, a statewide strategic plan “to efficiently and effectively use technology to meet our society’s goals,” in January 2021. It centers on three principles: putting people first; continuous, timely improvement; and the idea that working together is preferable to working alone. As part of its ongoing response to the state’s historic wildfires, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection stood up a Wildfire Analyst Enterprise solution for nearly instantaneous incident response and accurate modeling of fire spread. The new California State Automated Welfare System (CalSAWS) deployed in the fall of 2021 integrated 39 counties and the city of Los Angeles into an automated case management system; the remaining counties will be on board by next year.
*The California Digital Government Summit is hosted by Government Technology magazine, a publication of e.Republic, which also produces Industry Insider — California and is home to the Center for Digital Government.
