This year’s California winners run the gamut from state technology and security work to fire suppression and county election services. Here’s a quick look at this year’s honorees:
- Brian Fennessy is chief of the Orange County Fire Authority and was recently chosen as Fire Chief of the Year by his peers across the state. Before joining Orange County, Fennessy was fire chief in San Diego, where he spent nearly 30 years. There, he was instrumental in bringing sensors to bear on fighting wildfires, as well as the birth of the Fire Integrated Real-Time Intelligence System (FIRIS). It gives firefighters and officials alike ground-level intelligence on where wildfires are, how big they are and where they’re going, via data from fixed-wing aircraft. The program’s success is prompting other agencies to explore its potential.
- Jeramy Gray is chief deputy at the Registrar-Recorder/Clerk of Los Angeles County and is a mainstay at the county, where he has held various roles since 2007. These include serving as CIO at a number of agencies, and Gray told GT he believes technology professionals can have a broader impact in more general leadership roles. His tech background has enabled him to contribute to major county priorities including improving cybersecurity, expanding the use of communications platforms and SMS, and the Internet of Things. He’s also helping the county comply with recent state legislation requiring agencies to redact discriminatory language from historical real estate documents, and has led the push to infuse the county’s voting process with technology. Find Gray’s Industry Insider — California One-on-One profile here.
- Vitaliy Panych is the state of California’s chief information security officer, a role he has had since January 2021 after being acting CISO for nearly two years. His state service since 2003 includes time as AISO at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation before joining the California Department of Technology in January 2019. His time since has been anything but uneventful; Panych helped expand CDT’s Security Operations Center, which monitors cyber threats around the clock; created a “dedicated statewide incident response team”; and shepherded Cal-Secure, the state’s multiyear information security maturity road map for the executive branch, to release in October 2021.
- Amy Tong has been secretary of the California Government Operations Agency since March 2022 and was previously state chief information officer and CDT director from June 2016 through 2021, through much of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Serving as secretary is the latest step for her in a journey that now offers her the chance to move from direct work with hardware and software to advocating for how technology can help government move forward. A current passion project is the expansion statewide of broadband; Tong has been instrumental in building 10,000 miles of middle-mile coverage to make that happen. The project broke ground in San Diego in October.
Find Government Technology’s full coverage of its Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers for 2023 here.
