Kimberly Crabtree is agency enterprise architect at the California Health and Human Services Agency (CalHHS), a role she has had since May 2021. A veteran of state service, Crabtree joined CalHHS after more than 14 years at the California Department Technology, where she had most recently been lead enterprise architect from July 2010-May 2021. Crabtree’s state career began in December 1996 when she joined the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as a desktop engineer, working at the department for a decade before joining CDT.
Crabtree has a Bachelor of Science degree with emphases on business administration, management information science and economics. She has a master’s degree in enterprise architecture and business transformation from Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology. She is a graduate of the 25th class of the state’s Information Technology Leadership Academy (ITLA), a 17-week program for public-sector IT staffers and executives with a focus on critical leadership skills.
Industry Insider — California: Take me through your time in the public sector. How long have you been at the state, how long have you been at the California Health and Human Services Agency, and how long have you been in your current role?
Crabtree: I started at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in 1996 as a student assistant, back when supporting the data center meant you built and installed your own servers, configured your own network, pulled your own cables under the raised floor, and drove it to the institution yourself. There were no boundaries on administrative responsibilities; it was a great place to grow up in IT. I was originally pre-med until this job. Tech was a whole new world and I loved it! Liana Bailey-Crimmins gave me my first glimpse of enterprise architecture (EA) in 2005 when she asked me to start that program. It was the latest buzz around state IT organizations — I’d never heard of it. After 10 years, in 2007 I went to the California Department of Technology as an information security specialist working in the Office of Information Security. I consulted on the security of the data center’s hosted environments and wrote their first complete set of information security policies and procedures. I wanted back into EA, so I promoted into a position in CDT’s Office of Enterprise Architecture (OEA). In my 10 years in the OEA, I learned the state’s Project Approval Lifecycle processes where I applied EA practice methods to support complex project planning activities, graduated ITLA 25, earned a Master of Professional Study degree in enterprise architecture and business transformation, redesigned the California Enterprise Architecture Framework, and supported the state’s Vision 2023. In May 2021, I accepted my current role as agency enterprise architect at CalHHS in the Office of the Agency Information Officer. In my one year and 10 months at CalHHS, I have watched the EA practice in this agency catapult forward faster than I could have ever hoped.
IICA: How would you describe your current role, agency enterprise architect at CalHHS, in terms of responsibilities and duties? How large is your current team?
Crabtree: I lead the agency EA program for CalHHS with a team of five stellar advisers and a dedicated and participative extended team of approximately 20 architect representatives from each of our CalHHS departments. Together, we drive the architecture foundations needed to support the CalHHS IT and Data Strategic Plan. The EA foundations are to:
- Drive agency EA program maturity.
- Manage the CalHHS core business capability knowledge base.
- Lead cross-agency technical capability development that enables CalHHS teams to better integrate systems and services, and share data.
- Lead architecture assurance processes that align strategic IT initiatives to CalHHS strategic priorities.
Crabtree: We are just getting started and have many targets at the forefront that will push the maturity of each of our foundations. Our strategic focus is to promote enterprise-level architecture for composable business — enabling CalHHS IT organizations and system design to be more modular, increasing operational resiliency to the needs of business. Our tactical focus is on supporting data exchange framework(s), framing data ecosystem competencies, and establishing a secure and privacy-conscious person-matching capability across CalHHS system data sources.
Editor’s note: According to Gartner, a composable business is one “made from interchangeable building blocks” — in part, a modular architecture.
IICA: You accepted a CIO Leadership Award at the recent California Public Sector CIO Academy. Can you share a bit about the work that led to you receiving that award, the needs it resolved, its goals and your role in it?
Crabtree: I believe I received this award for leading an experienced path-less-traveled with the CalHHS enterprise architect community, to create a complete agency business architectural view faster than expected, that better informs strategic agency-level IT and data planning. This work had many starts and stops with various approaches over the years; however, it now provides an established view that is and will remain the CalHHS business landscape for which strategic architectural targets are consistently anchored. The CalHHS EA community has grown threefold in consistent participation since I started. Stabilizing the agency EA direction, program implementation and maturity, through the collaborative and congruent design of architecture support to our agency programs, will continue to be my focus into the coming years.
IICA: What best practices might you offer as a result of having completed that work?
Crabtree: Select and be consistent in the implementation method that you use to build your business architecture. I used the Applied Business Architecture method. Keep consistency in the viewpoint for which you design architecture models if you intend to rationalize the findings. Remember that the model is not the deliverable; it’s what the model tells you that is. Stay lean in your scope and depth as appropriate to obtain the answers you’re looking for. Learn to enable and participate in fusion teams.
IICA: In your time at CalHHS — or at another state entity — what IT project or achievement are you most proud of?
Crabtree: I think I’m in the middle of it right now. I’ve worked on countless IT projects during my state tenure, but nothing has compared to what is formulating now with the people side of the CalHHS EA program. The past years’ increase of meaningful experiences in pulling architects together on progressive ideas and building relationships with agency IT leaders is what I’m most proud of. These interactions are at the core of how we will solve some of the IT challenges we all share.
IICA: What has surprised you most this year in government technology?
Crabtree: What has surprised me most this year is the mindset shift in leadership toward intentionally driving enterprise services and designing shared technology solutions that support multiple like-business needs. We’ve talked about economies of scale and decreasing debt in state government IT for as long as I remember, but we’re finally seeing this collective shift en masse to act on it. I attribute that to the increasing number of IT leaders that want what a “build once, serve many” operating strategy can do.
IICA: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the gov tech/SLED sector?
Crabtree: Many research outlets, but I must give a shoutout specifically to LinkedIn on this one. It’s a fantastic resource. The information is usually relevant, diverse, and top of field. And the professional forums and realistic experiences posted directly from practitioners themselves is a perspective you don’t easily find elsewhere.
IICA: What are your favorite hobbies and what do you enjoy reading?
Crabtree: Literally anything with my family and friends, being an involved parent in my kids’ school district, and gardening. Just finished Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less by Alex Epstein. I enjoy reading counter-perspectives to mainstream ideas.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and brevity.
