CIO Peter Loo Shares His Vision for L.A. County IT

Los Angeles County has some big IT projects on the horizon, according to its CIO, Peter Loo.

Those projects include an ongoing update to the tax administration system, the approaching award of an e-procurement transformation solicitation, and plans for a community information exchange, among others.

Earlier this summer, the Board of Supervisors appointed Loo as the county’s permanent chief information officer, giving him the official nod to keep pursuing the initiatives he had been leading for the last three years as the acting CIO.

Loo recently shared his plans with Industry Insider — California and talked through some of the complexities that come with running IT in the state’s largest and most populous county — a county that’s home to nearly one-quarter of the state’s roughly 39 million residents.

Luckily, the CIO is no stranger to the inner workings of the regional government; he started out as an intern with the Department of Health Services before joining the rank and file as an employee. After leaving to do some consulting work, he returned to the county in 2006, ultimately working his way into a deputy CIO role under then-CIO Bill Kehoe.

Kehoe’s 2021 departure to join Washington state government as the chief information officer would set the stage for Loo to take the lead over L.A. County IT.

“It's a continuation … I've been in this acting role for a while. Even in the role when I was working with Bill, there were some initiatives and strategies that we had put together and were working to build, support and implement,” he told Industry Insider — California.

The annual operating budget for IT — not including new projects and the like — stands at around $2.5 billion. Two other funding mechanisms — the Information Technology Fund and the Legacy Modernization Fund — have been tapped for around $260 million in collaborative and upgrade projects over the last five years, Loo explained.

As with many large government organizations, the CIO noted that L.A. County's federated structure adds plenty of complexity where data sharing and policy oversight are concerned. One area the county is putting IT focus is on information sharing across the 39 departments as well as performance metrics for critical services.

“A big part is building out a platform to be able to aggregate data from some various case management systems and care management systems to write a much more comprehensive view of the constituents that we serve,” Loo said.

“The challenge has always been, what can be shared? When can it be shared, with whom can it be shared, and for what purpose, right? There's an old consent management layer to that component that we are also working through to figure out how to work within those guidelines,” he added.

Each department has its own set of contract providers, which has made service referrals between the departments difficult. This is something Loo and his team are working to address with a provider registry within the community commission exchange.

Recruiting and retaining the county’s cybersecurity workforce is another area Loo is focusing his energy, with the consideration of a cybersecurity extended detection and response (XDR) service procurement.

“We are looking at the possibility of recruiting and procuring a managed XDR service; that includes both technology and services to integrate with our cybersecurity infrastructure so that we are better positioned to improve the posture,” Loo said.

Where broader cybersecurity is concerned, Loo noted that his office is responsible for setting policy, architecture and strategy across the county’s diverse departments, which range from government administration and law enforcement to health care and social services.

The county is also involved in regional and state efforts to bolster threat intelligence and critical incident response, especially as large events like the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympics put a spotlight on the region — for fans and hackers alike.

As far as emerging technologies go, Loo noted that AI and robotic process automation are being explored in multiple departments. The county recently released an internal technology directive and governance charter to better guide departments in their adoption of these new tools.

“With every new technology is a shiny object, people sometimes just get so entranced with the technology and then try to look for a problem to solve,” he said, adding that a toolkit will follow within the next month or so that will include contracting language and additional resources for departments.

When he’s not keeping L.A. County IT on the rails, Loo spends his time involved in charity and nonprofit work.

“It's important to me to be connected to those because it gives me a better sense of some of the challenges and whatnot that I can bring back to my work as county CIO, a better appreciation of things that are happening on the ground,” he said.

Loo is also well-traveled and enjoys spending time in Singapore, Malaysia and Europe.