As part of Industry Insider — California’s ongoing efforts to educate readers on state agencies, their IT plans and initiatives, here’s the latest in our periodic series of interviews with departmental IT leaders.
Jose Cisneros is director of IT services at the city of Chula Vista, a role he has had since June 2022. A career U.S. Navy officer, he was most recently its information warfare commander, serving as an adviser, mentor and trainer to Commander Carrier Strike Group 15 from April 2021-June 2022, according to his LinkedIn. Before that, Cisneros was director of network and defensive cyber operations for the U.S. Forces in Japan, from September 2019-April 2021.
He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Arizona, a Master of Arts degree in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College, and a Master of Education from Johnson & Wales University.
Industry Insider — California: As CIO at your organization, how do you describe your role? How have your role and responsibilities changed in recent years in terms of their intersection with IT and innovation?
Cisneros: I just took on this new position in June. I retired from the Navy; I was basically doing the same kind of role in the Navy. (When I arrived,) every department was basically running their own IT spending, their own IT monies, doing their own IT projects.
The city manager has made it very clear that we have an IT director, and all IT procurement projects will go through me as the IT director. I see (the position) changing eventually to a role like a CIO. My role, I think, is more looking at all the IT, how we spend it and is it in line with the technology master plan, the smart city concept. And if not, and if it’s needed, then we need to adjust our master training plan, our master technology plan.
We were very decentralized and now we need to be centralized, my logic is, for security purposes, for fiscal security and privacy concerns. So that’s what we’re driving to, is having a more centralized review of projects and what we’re doing with IT monies.
IICA: Does your organization have a strategic plan, and may we hyperlink to it? How big a role do you personally play in writing that strategic plan?
Cisneros: I think it needs to be re-evaluated. I think it’s dated. There’s some good things in there but I think eventually it will have to be re-evaluated.
Editor’s note: Chula Vista’s 2020 Telecommunications Master Plan covers everything from fiber to cloud to data center improvements.
IICA: What big initiatives or projects are coming up? What sorts of developing opportunities and RFPs should we be watching for in the next six to 12 months?
Cisneros: We’re not really out for big projects. The only one that I think (may) go out for bid is our copier and printer management. That needs to be renewed; that’s one that will potentially be coming around. We’re still looking at other things, but right now it’s mostly just studying what we have.
We’re developing a cyber road map to go along with the strategic plan and we’re going to start looking at everything through a cyber lens first. My role is to stabilize the network, identify all vulnerabilities, identify everything that we have in the network, and then start securing the network. And once we have it secured, start looking at what’s next. Virtualization, zero trust, all these things, once we stabilize the network and the environment, then we can start looking at what’s next.
IICA: In your opinion, what should local government be doing more of in technology?
Cisneros: With the city, its whole idea is that we want to be a smart city — connecting our streetlights, enabling faster 911 response. We have a desire to provide Wi-Fi in all our city parks, all our city rec areas, our libraries, for the citizens. It’s providing that opportunity for the citizens to be connected, whether they have the means or not.
A very important thing for the city is to eliminate the technology divide. The (Interstate) 805 splits the city in half and there’s a big divide, economically, between the east and west. I think technology needs to be readily available for both, not just because there’s better tax revenue in the east. I think that’s where ... what we could be doing more of is providing technology and eliminating those divides. We are in the process of rolling out a new network for the publicly accessible computers at our libraries, which are predominantly on the west side right now. The two major libraries that we have are on the west side and we’re upgrading all their IT for the public here — new computers, new desktops, desktop-as-a-service.
IICA: How do you define “digital transformation?” How far along is your organization in that process, and how will you know when it’s finished?
Cisneros: We have both the need for our employees, the city, to better serve the public, and then having different services for the public available ... a click away. We are right now in the infancy of technology transformation. I was just on a call with Microsoft, and we are licensed for Microsoft Office 365, and we pay a significant amount per employee, which adds up. But I feel like we’re only using 10 percent of what we’re paying for. Like every organization, we use Outlook, Word, Excel, and that’s pretty much the extent of it. But we have all these applications that can allow our employees to better collaborate and better provide services to the citizens.
But we’ve been paying for the services for, what, four years now? We’ve been like, “Hey, how come we’re not using this application? How come we still have people on shared drives instead of on OneDrive, instead of SharePoint or Teams?” I think we’re at the beginning of it. I think the more I can get the employees to adopt digital and do their work digitally, the better we can provide services to our citizens. When we put those services in the cloud or on a public-facing website, we now provide the citizen the ability to get to those (services) via Wi-Fi. We’ve got a long way to go still.
IICA: What is your estimated IT budget and how many employees do you have? What is the overall budget?
Cisneros: My staff is close to 25 now. We’re adding bodies here in the next month or so. Hopefully in about six months, I’ll be up to around 28 people. That supports police, fire, the rest of the city, enterprise software, IT help desk and IT engineering. Budget-wise, payroll-wise, a rough estimate is about $1 million right now. But that covers a lot of the enterprise licenses that we have and different leases that we have for IT.
Editor’s note: Chula Vista’s adopted budget for the 2022-2023 Fiscal Year was $533.7 million.
IICA: How do you prefer to be contacted by vendors, including via social media such as LinkedIn? How might vendors best educate themselves before meeting with you?
Cisneros: Our stuff is publicly accessible. When I get vendors who call me, I get them off the phone as soon as I can. Especially when they’re asking questions they could easily look (up on) a website. The best way to get my attention is through a vendor who contacts me via email or via LinkedIn, but who shows that they actually know what I need and have already seen everything accessible, that they made a little effort to research before they cold-called me. Show me that you’ve done a little bit of research. It doesn’t take a whole lot, just look up my website and look at everything that’s there already.
IICA: In your tenure in this position, which project or achievement are you most proud of?
Cisneros: At the city here, I think it’s just having my staff understand. It’s been a quick four months and I’ve thrown a lot at them, but they’re understanding what we’re trying to do. And getting them involved — in the past, decisions were ... very isolated. They weren’t being shared with the entire group. From day one, I said, “This is your department. This is your decision.”
As an example, I’m about to go into (procurement) for a new video wall for our network operating center. It’s not going to be little because it’s going to cost a significant amount of money and I (said), “You guys have got to be involved in this. You have to tell me, you’re the IT professional. Is it going to be worth it? Is it going to return the investment and the money? Are we over-engineering for what we actually need? I want your feedback,” because I can easily make the decision and say, “This is what we got, and you have to live with it.” But it’s your job to understand why and ask the question — ask the question also as a taxpayer. I’m telling them, can you look your neighbor in the face and say ... “This is why I spent a quarter-million dollars”? If you can’t say that and you can’t look your neighbor in his eye ... then it’s not the right thing to do.
IICA: What has surprised you most this year in government technology?
Cisneros: I think a lot of it’s just lack of oversight, the lack of governance. We’re going to be implementing a governance board for the city, to evaluate. Now when public works wants to bring in a new project for whatever reason, it’s going to go to this committee, headed by me or another person. And then having finance, procurement, other city leadership in this committee that will be able to thumbs-up or thumbs-down on this project and ask a simple question, “How is it being funded? How is it being maintained? What’s the effects on privacy? What’s the effects on cyber?” All these ... questions that were not being asked. And the No. 1 question, “Is it needed? Is department X doing the same thing already and has the same application that you can just piggyback on?” Those kinds of questions that were not being asked. And so, that’s surprising.
Every dollar is very important, and IT is very expensive. Not having that oversight ... that was kind of surprising. ... My job is to try to set it up here within the next six months or so.
And we’ll also be dealing with privacy. That’s a big thing in Chula Vista right now, the council just adopted a policy on privacy and technology. So, this committee will be looking at every application or every project with the idea of privacy, is it impacting citizen privacy? How is it being protected?
IICA: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the gov tech/SLED sector?
Cisneros: I don’t read much on gov tech. I read articles, I spend a lot of time researching (and) just reading what comes up in my news feed, basically, in IT.
My hobby is, I’m a golfer, so I golf every chance I get, I’m always on the golf course. Because I play a lot, it’s cheaper for me to play at military courses. I was a history major in college. I have a master’s in adult education and a master’s in international relationships. I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years, and the Navy never sent me to a technical school in my entire life. I’ve never been to an IT school, it’s all been OJT as they call it — on-the-job training. So, a lot of it is just reading, reading. But I don’t like reading after work.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and brevity.
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