Jennifer Chan is agency information officer at the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) — a role she has held since February 2019, though she’s a nine-year veteran of state service. Before that, she worked at Informatix Inc., for nearly seven years. At a Techwire member briefing in July, Chan discussed CDFA’s ongoing modernization and updates to its Emerging Threats Information System.
Techwire: As AIO of your organization, how do you describe your role — and how have the role and responsibilities of the CIO changed in recent years?
Chan: CDFA is a bit different because even though we are a department, we are also a cabinet-level agency, so we have both AIO and CIO roles. As the AIO, my focus is on how I can better strategically position my IT organization to be more flexible, adaptable, and responsive to the needs of our business while thinking forward to how we can leverage innovations in technology. My CIO’s focus is on ensuring that as an IT organization, we can operationally support those strategic initiatives. Together, it’s critical that we work lockstep as our work efforts and priorities are so closely aligned and are complementary to each other.
Innovations in technology and the emphasis on security have really driven how the role the CIO has changed over the years. CIOs today must be much more security minded; but at the same time, the speed at which technology is advancing has required IT organizations to be more flexible, adaptable, strategic, and even creative around how we approach implementing solutions to meet the ever-changing demands to deliver immediate business value.
Techwire: How big a role do you personally play in writing your organization’s strategic plan?
Chan: I personally facilitated and executed the development and implementation of my IT strategic plan with the involvement of my management team. When it comes to the development of CDFA’s strategic plan, all the directors including myself work collaboratively on it.
Techwire: What big initiatives or projects are coming in 2020? What sorts of RFPs should we be watching for in the next six to 12 months?
Chan: One large, complex project that we’re currently working on is Emerging Threats 2 (ET2). ET2 is intended to result in a modern and comprehensive information system for animal health and food safety programs. We are just in Stage 2 of this project. Our consulting needs have been primarily in the areas where we lack expertise or sufficient resources – project management, programming, security, infrastructure, etc… We recently released a staff augmentation type solicitation, but I expect we may have solicitations to address similar needs in the future as we ramp up work on specific projects we have in queue. We also may be looking at some commercial off-the-shelf, or Software as a Solution solutions too.
Techwire: How do you define “digital transformation,” and how far along is your organization in that process? How will you know when it's finished?
Chan: My definition of digital transformation is how quickly we can leverage technology such cloud computing to solve our business problems, which in many cases may still leverage obsolete technology or manual processes. We are actively working on digital transformation but we’re still in what I’d characterize as an infancy stage. We have a lot of opportunities here. As far as when I’ll know when we’re finished? I look at it as a continuous process of improvement — our work in this space will never be done.
Techwire: What is your estimated IT budget and how many employees do you have? What is the overall budget?
Chan: Currently, our IT budget is around $10 million, and we have approximately 75 positions. But, as I continue to work on rebuilding and growing the capacity of my IT organization, you’ll see both numbers increase, hopefully, over time.
Editor's note: CDFA's total budget for Fiscal Year 2019-2020 is more than $598 million.
Techwire: How do you prefer to be contacted by vendors? How might vendors best educate themselves before meeting with you?
Chan: I am not a big fan of the cold-call approach. An email or better yet, going through my assistant is the best way to contact me. My expectation is that vendors have done their homework before meeting with me to understand our business but more importantly that they already understand the state procurement process and are certified to do business in California. If you’re going to pitch your goods or services, they better be relevant to my needs and you need to be well versed in the state requirements for how to do business with us.
Editor's note: Chan told Techwire that with respect to social media, she utilizes LinkedIn in professional settings.
Techwire: In your tenure, which project or achievement are you most proud of?
Chan: I have only been here a little over a year. But what comes to mind is establishing and formalizing a process for enterprise governance and enterprise project portfolio prioritization and rationalization for our department’s IT projects.
Techwire: If you could change one thing about IT procurement, what would it be?
Chan: Make it less bureaucratic and more open to competition. I think we’re headed that way with the Governor’s Executive Order introducing the piloting of RFI2. But there’s more work to be done in that space.
Techwire: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the gov tech/SLED sector?
Chan: Techwire and the news of course. I’ll occasionally peruse other tech-focused/tech-related magazines and online publications as well if I see something interesting.
Techwire: What are your hobbies, and what do you enjoy reading?
Chan: I ride horses as a hobby and also competitively. I compete at the world and national level and have earned multiple championship titles. I have been involved with horses since I was 2 years old. I enjoy reading almost everything — all sorts of fiction, dramas, sci-fi, mysteries, fantasy, you name it! Though, I’m a bit of a chicken, so I’m selective about the thrillers that I read.
