The California Department of Technology recently upgraded its employee training facilities at the Office of Professional Development with technology that could interface with any equipment, especially because vendors who offer training to state employees often bring equipment or data to the classes on their own hardware.
Vendors often provide training on products or skills when the state does not have the capacity to build a curriculum.
"Depending on what the training is, whether the training is developed or is available in-house, otherwise we look to the vendor community and see who can provide it with the scope, scale and cost we're looking for," Scott Paterson said. "What we want to do is make sure we're providing the latest and greatest training there is. We're open to all the vendors, products and services that are out there," the acting deputy director of the office told Techwire in an interview.
The office is responsible for the four leadership academies hosted by CDT.
"A lot of the need comes from the IT community itself," Paterson said. "We use our IT executive council, all our AIOs; we brought out what the needs are. Or if we have something that we already developed and we're waiting for approval or want buy-in from everyone else, that's the group we do it through."
The upgrades include 4K projectors, a new audio system and speakers from Crestron, Epson smart boards, mobile chairs and desks, in-desk computers and ADA-compliant furniture. The smart boards can record interactions with the board and the surrounding class, tilt flat to be drawn on like a architect's desk or project trainer interactions.
The five training rooms can hold about 200 people and all can be connected across the audio system and project the trainer across all screens. The entire renovation was paid for by a $50,000 match grant.
