5 Municipal Tech Leaders Honored With MISAC President’s Awards

Five veterans of government technology have been honored for their willingness to “go well above and beyond” in the furtherance of the goals of the Municipal Information Systems Association of California (MISAC).

The members were presented with President’s Awards from the organization’s leader, Miguel Guardado, IT director for the city of Manhattan Beach.

The five honorees were:

• Brian Ganley and Rich Castillon, Lifetime Members: The two were recognized “for the countless hours they contributed doing a pre-review of every 2024 MISAC Excellence in IT Practices Award submission,” MISAC said in a news release. “Past history had shown that some agencies had inadvertently skipped questions or had not submitted the necessary documents for consideration. The pre-review allowed for the submitting agency to make the necessary additions or corrections before the submission was sent to one of the Review Teams for a final decision of whether to award an Excellence Award, an Achievement Award, or be disqualified altogether.”
  Ganley is a longtime tech leader in the public and private sectors, having served as chief information officer for the Los Angeles Police Department, the county of Ventura and the cities of Glendale and West Hollywood. He previously worked as an IT systems analyst for the State Compensation Insurance Fund, and most recently has been a senior project consultant with SDI Presence.
  Castillon, who’s now retired, was the longtime CIO for the Orange County Sanitation District, and he has remained active in MISAC since his retirement.
• Jessica Crone, city of Rancho Cordova: Crone, a management analyst for the city, was recognized for her planning and execution of the MISAC Central Chapter’s AI and Cybersecurity Symposium. The multiday event ended up being a mini conference focusing on cybersecurity and AI. Crone also served as the 2024 MISAC Central Chapter president.
• Josh Erquiaga, city of San Luis Obispo, and Scott Sawin, city of Woodland: The two MISAC Central Chapter past presidents were honored for their efforts during the CrowdStrike outage. “There were many MISAC members who contributed to helping everyone through the outage,” Guardado said, referring to the massive July 19 outage. “In my mind, Josh and Scott went above and beyond. They not only were involved in getting the word out about the problem but were instrumental in providing solutions that reduced the effects on the MISAC community, which once again highlighted the value and power of MISAC and the MISAC community.”
  Erquiaga is San Luis Obispo’s IT manager, having worked his way up during his eight-year tenure from network administrator to network services supervisor and, in September 2023, to IT manager. His background includes having worked in the private and nonprofit sectors.
  Sawin is the IT manager for the city of Woodland and is a former president of MISAC’s Central Chapter. During a MISAC webinar in August, Sawin was among those who made presentations to the group; he spoke on “Lessons Learned: Global Business and IT Outage.”

MISAC’s fall conference, where Guardado presented the President’s Awards, was held Sept. 22-25 in Monterey. Guardado was featured in an Industry Insider — California One-on-One interview in September 2023.