As part of Techwire’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.
Subbarao Mupparaju is the chief information officer for the California Department of Housing and Community Development, a position he has held since August. Mupparaju was previously the longtime CIO and deputy director of the Information Technology Division at the Financial Information System for California (FI$Cal), a position he held since July 2015. His previous state service includes time at the California Department of Technology as chief technology officer and state chief enterprise architect — taking the latter role in June 2012 when CDT was still known as the California Technology Agency. Before that, Mupparaju spent more than 20 years in the private sector with time at IBM as a chief architect — where he worked on the Child Welfare Services/Case Management System for the Office of Systems Integration; and at HP, where he served as the chief architect for the California Department of Motor Vehicles IT Modernization Project.
Mupparaju has a master’s of engineering from PSG College of Technology in India. He’s a Project Management Institute-certified Project Management Professional and an International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) certified Information Technology Specialist. He received the Hewlett Packard Most Valuable People award in 2010 and the IBM Hundred Percent Club award in 2003. His public speaking engagements have included a discussion of what IT leaders might expect in 2021, at Techwire’s virtual “State of Technology – CA Industry Forum.”
Techwire: As CIO of your organization, how do you describe your role; and how have the role and responsibilities of the CIO changed in recent years?
Mupparaju: The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) has a broad array of programs and serves many types of customers. IT at HCD is not just an operations and enablement function, but is a source of innovation and digital transformation. My role here is to create business value through technology-based business innovation and digital initiatives, to build fully agile teams to support the development and deployment of new business capabilities, to serve as a central architect to help manage the technology-enabled innovations and capabilities, and be a trusted partner to my peers and customers.
Techwire: How big a role do you personally play in writing your organization’s strategic plan?
Mupparaju: My superiors and our executive leadership team understand that the CIO involvement in the strategic planning process is critical to formulating an effective digital strategy. Our leadership is very inclusive and leverages collective intelligence in formulating goals and strategies. I directly participate in the divisional summits, goal steward team sessions and executive-level governance meetings where we formulate strategic goals and prioritize the projects based on their mission outcomes.
Techwire: What big initiatives or projects are coming up? What sorts of RFPs should we be watching for in the next six to 12 months?
Mupparaju: We have several digital transformation initiatives such as online services for permits, licenses and registrations, accountability case management, a consolidated housing financing solution with real-time visibility into outcomes, and other customer experience improvements. We also have several technology upgrades and cloud services expansion projects. Currently, state staff are leading these efforts with support from a few augmented consultants. We are working on releasing solicitations for some of these projects within the next three months.
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?
Mupparaju: I view digital transformation as a foundational change in how an organization delivers value to its customers by solving business problems through an aggregation of modern processes and technology capabilities. This transformation can help us build deeper relationships with customers, make processes more efficient, launch new business models and make better decisions. This is really a journey. We are following an evolutionary path to mature our digital program. We are implementing a flexible, perpetually evolving enterprise architecture and fully agile teams organized around products to support the development and deployment of new business capabilities. It is hard to say there is a specific point where digital transformation is finished, but reaching a digital pure play model is our ideal target.
Techwire: What is your estimated IT budget, and how many employees do you have? What is the overall budget?
Mupparaju: HCD has rapidly grown over the past five years. With recent approvals, IT has 82 positions, and our annual IT budget is approximately $35 million.
Techwire: 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?
Mupparaju: Vendor partnerships are important for me as they have knowledge of how other organizations are leveraging their products and solutions and often bring solutions that I have not even thought about. I meet with vendors almost every week. I prefer to be contacted via email. There is a lot of information on our website which can help vendors educate themselves on HCD, including our strategies and initiatives.
Techwire: In your tenure in this position, which project or achievement are you most proud of?
Mupparaju: I am fortunate to work with strong leaders who demonstrate ultimate commitment to our mission and core values every day. The consistent theme in our efforts is to enable our employees to undertake and execute strategic projects and services to deliver the best possible outcomes for all our programs. Over the past six months, we closed out 12 projects and initiated seven new projects. We have made significant progress in our digital transformation journey. What makes me proud cannot be expressed any better than in an employee comment I just received — “There is more cooperation, higher morale, and our IT department has become a peaceful place to work since you have arrived.”
Techwire: If you could change one thing about IT procurement, what would it be?
Mupparaju: We utilize the Department of General Services (DGS) leveraged procurement agreements (LPAs) and CDT services including off-premises cloud services and other vendor-hosted subscription services (VHSS) for most of our IT procurements. DGS and CDT have continually expanded the technologies and services available through these channels and have made a lot of progress in improving the procurement process. HCD provides a broad array of services to various constituents, and often these services require special-purpose solutions. It would be very helpful if we could simplify the exception process and facilitate faster procurement of these special-purpose solutions, with the recognition that these procurements are simply to produce the necessary outcomes.
Techwire: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the gov tech/SLED sector?
Mupparaju: I read Government Technology,* Techwire and CIO.com publications and news, Info-Tech Research and Gartner publications, and various other technology or solution-specific materials. I talk to other CIOs, participate in Evanta’s CIO boardroom discussions, and vendor-sponsored roundtables. I take time to talk with our vendor partners to gain knowledge of their products and solutions.
Techwire: What are your hobbies, and what do you enjoy reading?
Mupparaju: Honestly, I do not have any notable hobbies and do not read much non-technical information. I spend my free time with family. I watch sports — basketball is my favorite sport — and movies.
*Government Technology magazine is a publication of e.Republic, which also produces Techwire.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and brevity.
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