The 2023-24 fiscal year began July 1, and the governor’s new proposed budget will likely offer a bit of reconciliation for projections in the enacted FY 2023-24 budget. Newsom’s new budget will use the current budget as a starting point, to an extent, in allocating future money for technology. A look at several ongoing areas of work can reveal a bit about where that funding may go. Among the takeaways:
- The California Department of Motor Vehicles continues work on its comprehensive modernization, the Digital eXperience Platform (DxP) project. But it is also underway on changes to the California New Motor Voter Program required by state Assembly Bill 796, including enhancements to the transfer of data to the Secretary of State’s Office, and customer identity verification and validation. The DMV sought in a budget change proposal (BCP) and received about $4.5 million of funding in FY 2023-24 for this work. (Budget numbers in this article are rounded.) The project is now in Stage 3 of the California Department of Technology’s (CDT) Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL) process, which centers on procurement, including developing a statement of work, completing a procurement risk assessment, and final solicitation package submission. (The PAL process’s fourth and final stage is project readiness and approval.)
- School cybersecurity as mandated by Assembly Bill 2355 could reappear in BCPs from CDT, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) or the California Military Department — which in a BCP jointly sought 17 positions across their organizations authorized from FY 2023-24 through 2026-27 plus $5.4 million from the General Fund in FY 2023-24. The bill generally required school districts, county offices of education, or charter schools to report cyber attacks that impacted more than 500 pupils or personnel to the California Cybersecurity Integration Center; and required the Center to stand up a database tracking the cyber attacks and to report annually to the governor. School cybersecurity shows up by name in the enacted FY 2023-24 state budget for Cal OES, which received $227,000 for that purpose from the General Fund. The BCP, however, covered multiple years.
- The state Board of Pilot Commissioners sought $1.1 million in FY 2023-24 and $316,000 in FY 2024-25 via a BCP to begin evaluating and planning for “business modernization to support program operations.” It also asked for one new permanent position and $139,000 in FY 2023-24 and ongoing for business modernization work, new workloads from recent legislation, and for ongoing administrative workloads. The board received $1.3 million and the one position in FY 2023-24 in its portion of the enacted state budget. The project is in the first stage of the PAL process; this stage focuses on business analysis.
- The Employment Development Department’s EDDNext, its multiyear modernization, looks to update everything from online applications to call centers, the claims process, policies, procedures and forms, per its website. In a BCP, the department sought $198 million in FY 2023-24 — nearly half of that from the General Fund — to continue the work. EDDNext received the amount it asked for from the General Fund, $99 million, plus the same amount from other funds. However, the project is only in the first stage of the PAL process.
