The California Coastal Commission has a budget of nearly $24.6 million for the 2017-18 fiscal year. Its IT department doesn't have its own budget; most of it comes under the overall operations budget. It has agreements with the Natural Resources Agency and the Department of Water Resources that allows it to use and access their data center.
With about 160 staff in six offices, and an IT department of four people plus a web developer and a data base administrator, the CCC often struggles to manage system upgrades and migrations, said CIO Alfred Wanger.
Another issue for the agency is an increased demand for IT procurement and services, but a lack of funding for these projects, Wanger said. The CCC had previously had a lot of on-premise servers, which it is now upgrading to the cloud due to recent state regulations, but he said a lack of resources is making it difficult to accomplish this.
Within the last couple of years, the CCC implemented a commercial, off-the-shelf Accela solution. It helped to consolidate 14 old databases that had been developed in-house into one accessible database for internal use.
It is working to transform this internal database into a public data portal on the CCC’s website. It is expected to be completed in the next six to 12 months.
“We’re cognizant of the idea that people don’t know our data or our processes, and so to make it as transparent as we can, we’re really trying to make sure that key data that most people would find most useful is the data that we really want to provide,” Wanger explained to Techwire.
The CCC is working on and plans to continue a significant upgrade of its web presence. Web developer Zach Moreno has been working to increase the CCC website’s usability, navigability and functionality.
YourCoast is a free web app developed by the CCC to help people make the most of their visits to the California coastline.
It is also looking to create a companion phone app for YourCoast, first for iOS devices, that is expected to be released in the next six months. It’s currently working to make this app available when there is no cell or Web connection.
The CCC has developed a Web service that presents a sea level rise vulnerability assessment for places along the coast. It allows governments and residents along the coast to see how they might be affected by sea level rise and plan ahead for those eventualities.
For future technological advancements, Wanger and the CCC’s IT department are trying to predict how cloud-based services will be used in the future, so any services it sets up can be useful as a future platform.
The IT department strives to keep the CCC up to date while doing the best it can to provide the best resources and information to its internal staff and the public, according to Wanger.
John Ainsworth — Director
Contact info: john.ainsworth@coastal.ca.gov
415-904-5202
Alfred Wanger — Chief Information Officer
Contact info: al.wanger@coastal.ca.gov
415-904-5265
