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.
Darryl Polk is the inaugural chief innovation officer and director of the Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) at the city of Rancho Cucamonga, a position he has had for more than six years. He was previously police administrative director at the city of Ontario for nearly five years, his most recent role during more than 18 years at that city; and was an adjunct faculty member at Cambridge College from July 2015 to January 2017. Under his leadership, Rancho Cucamonga debuted its first comprehensive IT road map, which enables planning for tech investments, and personnel and service needs. The city earned fifth place in its population category in the Center for Digital Government’s* 2021 Digital Cities Survey, up two spots from 2019 and 2020.
Polk has a Bachelor of Science degree in organizational leadership from National University with a certificate in human resource management, and a master’s in public administration from Villanova University. Among his professional licenses and certifications, he’s certified as a communications unit leader by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and has completed leadership and advisory academy training at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
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?
Polk: I have the advantage of coming in as the city‘s first CIO. And they branded it as the chief innovation officer, not a chief information officer. That let me know right out of the gate what their intentions were with the position. I’ve been with the city since 2016. And I really have had a great time overseeing their transformation from an IT management perspective to include IT as part of a baseline strategy for all of the city’s initiatives; and helping to guide the city’s ambitions with technology enabling them, rather than looking at it as just ‘Mind the shop and keep things running that we’ve already invested in.’ Internally, we have a director of innovation and technology and a deputy director of innovation and technology. And in terms of our roles, I would be the chief innovation officer, which is kind of outward-facing; and then Shelly Munson, who is my deputy director, serves as more of the CTO (chief technology officer), where she’s more inward-facing and looking at the actual foundational technology, how we’re implementing it and how we’re managing it.
Techwire: How big a role do you personally play in writing your organization’s strategic plan?
Polk: It’s been an evolution. We started off with kind of your standard ITMP when I came in, in 2016; it was the Information Technology Master Plan which was kind of justifying expenditures and trying to articulate the need in a single document. And what it’s evolved to over the tenure that I’ve been there is, it’s a three-part plan that – think of it like the Russian dolls that are kind of nested. So, we have an overarching technology road map that is really aimed at the North Star visions for technology: What outcomes do we want to see for technology? ... The next level down is the strategic services plan (which) rests within that. That talks about, based on what we’ve agreed to for the road map, what are the mechanics to get there? ... And then, the final nesting doll is the ITMP, which is indicating what resources we need to achieve the objectives identified in the SSP. This is mostly fiscal, but it’s road-mapping out five years in advance, how much money we think we’ll need in very broad strokes. We update it every year; the idea is that every year, we present back to executive leadership what we’ve accomplished in the previous year, what we intend to accomplish in the upcoming year and how that impacts the road map moving forward.
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?
Polk: We’re really leveraging a lot of momentum that we’ve built over the past 20 to 30 years toward our overarching goals for development in the city. We’re entering into that last phase of build-out, where it’s a lot of infill and a lot of development of the last few open acreage areas. What we’re trying to do now is really fulfill some of the aspirations that we’ve had, that we haven’t necessarily always had the resources, or the kind of the overarching supporting elements to make these visions come alive. One of the big things that we’re doing is we’re starting an initiative on a transportation district; we call it the HART District (Haven Avenue, Arrow Route and Rochester Avenue). ... We’ve got this industrial commercial area that has a lot of infill potential, there’s a lot of development going on there, some new, modern, affordable housing. It’s multimodal, commercial, retail and residential. ... We have started a very, very deliberate and very intentional outreach so that we have the Brightline high-speed rail, which will be the first high-speed rail operating on the West Coast; we’re going to beat the state on this one. It will go from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga through the desert. ... And we’re going to connect it to existing Metrolink so it will serve the greater Los Angeles Basin; and we’re in talks with The Boring Co. to provide a Boring tunnel to connect that hub to Ontario International Airport. And then, broad aspirations is, I’ve had some loose talks with the city of Los Angeles about joining into their initiative for human drone transportation, for unmanned aerial drone transport. Rancho Cucamonga is right at the outside range of what everybody believes is going to be the operating footprint for these drones that are coming online. ... It is actually part of Los Angeles’ transportation plan for the 2028 Olympics. So, we want to be a part of that. And that’s kind of been our driver for these ambitions, is looking around at what are the tectonic changes that are happening and how can we play into that? We are one of the most aggressive cities in the region as far as building out an electric vehicle infrastructure, making sure there’s charging, tying it in with commercial and residential developments around town. ... We’ve had that term ‘smart city’ that’s been batted around for the last decade. It’s kind of an interesting one because I’ve never heard anybody admit to being a ‘dumb city.’ ... But no one’s ever had a good definition for it. ... And I think we’re trying to evolve past that to an intentional city. Where, instead of throwing sensors on things and just applying technology randomly and seeing what the outcome is, we’re really trying to look at what are our big-picture aspirations and how can we get technology to suit that. ... One of the things that we’re building out, understanding that is, our council had the vision to start our own municipal broadband network. So we’re leveraging about 20 miles worth of traffic fiber that we had, and another 15 or 20 miles worth of city municipal fiber that’s connecting different facilities. ... We’ve secured bonds and we are building out that infrastructure in a three-phase approach so that we can start connecting all of our points in our city. It gives us the underlying backbone for all of these other digital services for autonomous vehicles, for ubiquitous sensing, for live traffic monitoring, for air traffic coordination, for these drones once they come online and even for unmanned drones. In the region, they’re already piloting unmanned drone delivery for small delivery services. We’re talking with a company called Airspace Link, about – they’re one of the first providers to bridge Federal Aviation Administration traffic control for drone delivery at the municipal level, where your city basically has an air traffic control function below, I think it’s 800 feet, to ensure safe transit of unmanned drones.
Techwire: What term or phrase do you use to refer to what many call “digital transformation?” How far along is your organization in that process and how will you know when it's finished?
Polk: I don’t think it’s ever finished. ... It’s much like building a house. ... If a house’s foundation isn’t good, the rest of it’s going to suffer. ... We’ve spent the last five years very intentionally building out the right foundation. We’ve updated our data network, our WAN (wide area network), to the entire city to where it’s 100-gigabyte capable. We’re running right now somewhere between 10- and 40-gig service. Right now, our ISP (Internet service provider) is at 3 gigs but we are ready for 10-gig service once ... that need arises. But we’ve also replaced our data center. Our data center was probably our most recent accomplishment; we moved to a Dell VMware VxRail system. ... We worked with our fire district to build it in a dual high-availability configuration, that’s sites that are about 5 miles apart connected by 40-gig fiber. ... If one site fails for any reason, the other site can pick up immediately and continue services. ... You have to maintain uninterrupted services across the board. It’s always this underlying challenge that flavors every decision that you have moving forward, is how can we make this pivot, how can we absorb this risk – with any of this, when you’re looking for added value, you’re taking on added risk. And I think that for IT, we are more in the risk management business than the technology business these days.
Techwire: What is your estimated IT budget, and how many employees do you have? What is the overall budget?
Polk: Our overall city budget, our operating budget is, I believe, about $200 million a year, give or take. That’s not including capital and some other budgets that are ancillary to that. Our operating budget is $6 million a year annually, so about three percent of the overall operating budget. That $6 million can be divided pretty cleanly between salaries and operations. I’ve got a staff of 24, but that includes ¯ I oversee the city’s procurement division, which is an interesting play. That was a decision that was made just before the pandemic and it was really trying to ... collaborate with them to modernize the procurement process, understanding that IT procurement is probably the most complicated procurement process that we have.
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?
Polk: I am all for outreach through whatever means, but I think the trick for vendors is just to have a bit of a thick skin. I get probably more than 100 cold calls or outreach methods on any given week. And I don’t respond to the vast majority of them. ... I don’t mind you reaching out on LinkedIn; if I’m out there, it’s fair game. I don’t mind you reaching out to my voicemail at work, to my email, but just don’t take it personal if I don’t call you back. ... My recommendation to vendors would be do your homework, understand who you’re reaching out to, be humble about it.
Techwire: In your tenure in this position, which project or achievement are you most proud of?
Polk: Overall, I’m most proud of how our team has evolved. I’m very proud of how our team went from the ‘silent service,’ which is what was expected of IT – is, operate silently in the background, keep things running, keep the lights on, don’t make noise, don’t make waves, and react to requests. Whereas, we’ve really matured to the point where everybody on the team is an advocate for the effective use of technology. We influence business process, we influence governments. We’re a voice to council. Our city manager knows the names of our IT analysts. I routinely try to get our staff in front of council and in front of the community to show the value that we bring. For Cybersecurity Month, we have a public cybersecurity awareness campaign that we orchestrate; we work with our community affairs team. I think that’s an alien concept to a lot of IT shops, to be a public-facing service. But I think that’s the pull; that is where gravity is pulling us for the entire industry. I am most proud of the evolution we’ve made as a team to position ourselves well for that.
Techwire: If you could change one thing about IT procurement, what would it be?
Polk: I think if I could change one thing, it’s my ability to modernize it effectively, given the restrictions and the tools that we have available to us. I just wish I was more capable of figuring out how to unlock this box. ... And I think the basic understanding ... the concept I’m trying to build from, is whatever we do, it has to build public trust. Whatever method we agree to, whatever method we settle on, I have to be able to defend it to our community, that it actually builds their trust. ... And with procurement, I think it’s the struggle of, there’s a reason that you have to open it up and open yourself up to that uncertainty, because there’s value out there that you’re unaware of all the time. And you want ... the people and the entities and the companies representing that value to have access to government procurement. But at the same time, you have proven reliable systems that provide you the comfort of absolute knowledge, that you’re saying, ‘Hey, if my job is to mitigate risk, I can mitigate risk by going with this product.’ I think it’s managing the tension between those two, and if I could figure out what the sweet spot is that’s effective, where we can keep ourselves open to new and progressive ideas and products but still maintain the integrity of our risk management strategy, then we’ll have answered the question for everybody.
Techwire: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the govtech/SLED sector?
Polk: Reading-wise, I try to keep my actual reading on stuff that’s a little bit outside of tech. I keep up on my tech mostly through podcasts. I’m a big fan of the old Leo Laporte, the Twitstuff and Windows Weekly. That allows me to orchestrate the things that suit my needs and interests and do it very passively, on the drive to work or when I’m working out or when I’m taking walks, I can just listen to my podcasts, it’s very easy to digest. Reading-wise I just finished A Promised Land by Barack Obama and my next one is going to be How I Built This by Guy Raz.
Techwire: What are your hobbies, and what do you enjoy reading?
Polk: Hobby-wise, I’m pretty anemic. I rode a motorcycle for a while, and I’ve gotten to an age where I realize that one mishap on that motorcycle would be really catastrophic for me. I just don’t heal the way I used to. I just try to stay active and connected and that’s sadly kind of tough these days. My spouse and I enjoy going out to concerts and going out to events, so we’re just looking forward to getting back into that realm. For recreational reading, I’m reading a book that one of our deputy city managers wrote, that’s a sci-fi zombie thing called When the Dead Awake. ... It’s a really short read, but it’s really fun.
*The Center for Digital Government is part of e.Republic, which also produces Techwire.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and brevity.
Techwire One-on-One: Rancho Cucamonga CIO on Advocating for Technology
