Rather than forcing new tech to fit old systems, the “DOC will likely start looking at opportunities to advance and leverage our new cloud-based infrastructure in the next fiscal year,” Chief Information Officer Catherine Kendall told Techwire in an email.
Following efforts to move from a paper-based office in 2018, the department estimates its cloud migration will be complete by mid-2019.
“With that, our next objective is to ensure that the end-user community is able to take advantage of the new features available in MSO 365 [Microsoft Office 365],” Kendall wrote.
Kendall also explained that for for the past two years, DOC has pursued a sustainable modernization effort to:
• Eliminate technical debt. "We have eliminated over 75 percent of our technical debt since 2016," she said.
• Migrate local/on-premises computing and storage technologies to the commercial Microsoft Azure Cloud through the California Department of Technology.
• Expand the use of MSO 365 tools and technologies available that will allow for improved self-service among DOC end users.
• Modernize custom applications and rebuild them to be Azure cloud-native and/or replace with SaaS and/or COTS where possible.
• Standardize IT skill sets to be interchangeable across multiple applications to mitigate risk of knowledge loss/resource dependence.
"By focusing on sustainable technology," Kendall wrote, "DOC is well positioned to respond to a changing policy and regulatory environment with modern solutions that can be delivered on an accelerated time frame.”
