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.
Van Williams is vice president of information technology services and chief information officer at the University of California, roles he has had since September 2021. He was previously vice chancellor of strategic technology initiatives, cyber responsible risk executive and vice chancellor of IT for UC Santa Cruz from June 2018-September 2021. Before that he was chief information officer at New York University’s Stern School of Business from November 2017-June 2018, culminating nearly 13 years at the school that was preceded by nearly five years as chief technology officer.
Williams has a Master of Business Administration from NYU’s Stern School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts in classicals and classical languages (Latin and Ancient Greek) from New York University. He is a Certified ScrumMaster by the Scrum Alliance.
Industry Insider — California: As CIO of your organization, how do you describe your role? How have the role and responsibilities of the CIO changed in recent years?
Williams: I’ve been in the role for a year. When I came into the role, the question was asked, “Is this really intended to be a facilitator role? Is it intended to be an operations role? Is it intended to be a vision role or a transformational role?” The answer is yes. Our goal is to look for ways to build a collaborative vision for the UC and try to orchestrate a framework under which all parts of the UC system are able to go out there and to collaborate. At the same point in time, we do support some major and, in many ways, some distinct operations and capabilities that it’s very hard to find in higher ed. With a quarter-million-plus students and similar size/scale numbers of HR and employees and staff, we support our missions for the entire UC. And along with that, admissions has a core student data set that allows us to do some things that are really unique. Similarly, we have one of the largest payroll systems in the world with our UCPath system; and one of the largest retirement systems in the world, and certainly the largest within higher ed, that we’re supporting. On the research front, I think we have about 10 percent of all the federal grants come to the UC system. As part of that, we have grant management royalty and (Internet protocol) IP tracking, and we’re going through some modernization work right now to really be able to process something like $250 million in royalty payments annually. That is the operation side of the role. The collaborative vision-setting and the facilitating side of the role is, we are in the process of implementing a new vision for IT. A big part of the work that we’ve done to get here is, we met with 422 people and counting now to really solicit their input and their feedback ... with three key strategies that we’re really trying to focus on. One is, how do we go out there and scale our UC digital infrastructure? If you think about a place like the UC, we have very large campuses — UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego, Davis. All of those campuses eventually have to deal with things like data centers. That’s something that’s become a commodity for us. We want to really be able to move folks from investing $20 million, $30 million to really collaborating on UC-wide data centers that have the built-in level of security, scale, scope, power management, and sustainability profiles that allow us to kind of really innovate at scale. A key part of that is to make sure that we’re not really doing just data center at scale, but we’re also really putting in place the foundations to do data at scale for the system as well. Two is, we’re trying to take a very different approach to leveraging digital adjacencies. We recently signed contracts, strategic relationship agreements with Cisco. We just finished up one with Amazon. As we’ve gone through this, we’re trying to shift away from signing a contract with the vendor and having them be a supplier where we say, “We’ll spend X number of dollars and you give us this much discount.” Instead, what we’ve done is we’ve opened up the conversations to more parts of the organization outside of the sales side. What we’ve said is, “Hey, if we have this relationship as a supplier, how do we get commitments from you all to go and recruit on all of our UC campuses?” How can we build a relationship where you all are supporting our workforce development needs or our student success needs by funding co-curricular activities for students? Or helping to kind of build in support for programs like e-gaming. How do we get you all much more supported around things that are mission-aligned for both of us, so that if we have shared goals around sustainability, that we’re really kind of contributing on all aspects of that? We call that leveraging digital adjacencies because these are folks that are adjacent to us, but they’re actually core to our mission, even if they’re adjacent to our service delivery. The third and final part of this is something that we believe is unique in the higher-ed space right now, where we’re looking to build out the first digital risk management program that we know of. The goal here is to move away from only cybersecurity, but recognizing that if you’re going to be managing digital risk, you’re going to have to actually be as proactive as you are reactive. Proactive isn’t just about identifying information assets; proactive is about recognizing that we need to have a stance and provide guidance and thought leadership around how people should be handling and thinking about quantum computing. It means that we need to be helping our faculty to understand what the implications of blockchain are so that they’re adopting technologies for it, which they are today, and they’re able to do it in a way that’s really thoughtful and that protects the UC IP assets. We’re able to give guidance in the space of AI and machine learning to our entire community so that we don’t have police departments going out there and implementing identification systems on video cameras that end up introducing bias that creates a new level of risk for the UC. We have to invest in not just educating people, but also really becoming thought leaders in that space and partnering to make sure that we’re trying to manage our digital risk footprint.
IICA: Can you share a little bit more on the process of collaborative vision setting and whether the strategic priorities are part of that?
Williams: We undertook two different large-scale assessments to really understand our landscape. One was assessment of the information security function across the UC. The other one was a general assessment of the IT function across the UC. The first thing that we did was, instead of going and talking to just CIOs or IT employees across the board, we ... spoke to the provosts from all of the UC campuses or chancellors, vice chancellors of research, CFOs, chief administrative officers, and really a huge swath of governance groups across the IT space and the business space, like HR as well as CIOs. We leveraged our partners to go and synthesize that into a current state road map and then identify the gaps and then to lay out a set of priority areas. We ended up sharing that feedback, trying to get from each of the stakeholder groups, what are the elements that they see as the top one or two items that they can get behind? We’ve taken all of that feedback and used that as the underpinning for what we’re really trying to build and roll out. Those strategic priorities are a result of that. We have a complimentary set of what we call operations strategic priorities, and then organizational design and development strategic priorities, to support moving forward on those things. We’re currently trying to get nailed down what that vision statement is. The way we’ve been working on that has been being UC’s digital impact engine. And that “digital” word is just meant to signify a shift away from IT service delivery in the sense of infrastructure data center and (enterprise resource planning systems) ERPs, and more towards a much more fully wholesome embrace of data and data analytics, design and design thinking as well as the adoption of things like automation and AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning). The thing that we’re looking at when we say “scale” is, we have an initiative in the UC called the Leveraging Scale for Value Program. And it hearkens a little bit to that initiative. Leveraging scale for value is something that we’ve built to support collaboration across the system and across campuses, and to make sure that that collaboration is recognized, it’s incentivized through pay — but it’s also not really tied to any individual business unit. It’s not an IT function, it’s really like a business function. And then finally, the last two words you heard me say were “digital infrastructure.” Our focus is really not about shared services. We’re not trying to go out there and say, “Hey, we want to centralize payroll or centralize how we process retirement.” What we’re trying to do is to say, “Hey, there’s a set of digital infrastructure and that infrastructure itself, being able to manage it at scale, provides a greater level of value.” We talked about the data center, certainly within the cybersecurity space, being able to share intelligence, it’s huge. If we can see that there’s an event happening at UC Santa Barbara, and then it popped up at Santa Cruz, we can use that information to go out there and advise other campuses as well. We’re trying to look at the core infrastructure or what I call the core UC digital identity. And make sure we’re being really intentional on strategy and investing in that, in a way that allows our local campuses to both differentiate and to get more bang for their buck on their local dollar.
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?
Williams: We have, I would say, a fairly large initiative to consolidate a lot more of the systemwide purchasing. I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of the systemwide RFIs (requests for information) and RFPs (requests for proposals) coming out. The big one that I’ve really been directly involved in is, we have an RFP that has just come out or is very close to coming out around trying to identify strategic IT consulting partners. Right now, we have nothing systemwide for IT. I want to get us to award it to two or three different vendors and partners that we can use with it. That’s going to be a really huge one. We just signed a contract with Amazon and there’s a whole portfolio and road map of projects that are tied to that, ranging from EHR (electronic health record) systems to transformation around our health data warehouse to things that are happening across our library. I think within the AWS space itself, if you kind of track on that, you’ll probably see a lot of initiatives that are coming out and looking for partners to engage with it. I think the other big one that we have is, we have one of the largest pension systems in higher ed. We are looking for an RFP to have a partner help us transition that to hosting. We’re moving it away from being outsourced and we’re insourcing it with the recognition that we need to control the design and the experience for that, as well as control the infrastructure to make sure we’re delivering on the promise of that. In the cybersecurity space, we also have an RFP coming out. We have threat detection; that is something that we have rolled out systemwide, and we’re looking for a new partner and looking to move to a next generation for that technology set. That’s also likely to be published and awarded.
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?
Williams: I define digital transformation as using data, design and technology with a specific focus on the automation and the AI technology to really advance our business capabilities and to create new business capabilities. On how far along we are in the process, this is that lovely quote: “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” I think, like many of the organizations that we have, we have to be very value-based in the way that we select how we apply some of these things. You’ll see, for instance, we have a fairly robust HR and payroll system, where we’re looking to apply tools like UiPath to really automate a fair amount of those business processes. We probably have within the academic medical center one of the most advanced health data warehouses in the country, and so you’re seeing a heavy amount of analytics over there. But then we have other areas, for example, our diversity, equity and inclusion, our student success space, where we’re really just at the outset of that. The data is still not quite identified, is not quite managed, and we don’t have the tools and the processes in place to be able to allow folks to extract the amount of value out of it that I would like to see. It’s a journey. I don’t know that there’s an end date. I think what we’re looking at is, over the next three to five years, what are the key areas that we really should be focused on for collaboration, to really kind of move it?
Editor’s note: The quote Williams cites is from writer William Gibson.
IICA: What is your estimated IT budget and how many employees do you have? What is the overall budget?
Williams: We have about 9,000 IT employees underneath this UC ecosystem. There are a fair amount of business technologists that are still as yet to be determined, so we say 9,000-plus for them. We work through an ecosystem with governance councils across the board — around security, IT, purchasing, educational technology, accessibility, you name it — to coordinate the work that we’re doing and to collaborate on moving things forward. The heart and the soul of that ends up residing within the office of the president, where we have 300 employees and counting, to orchestrate both through the management of all these systems that are really kind of supporting this, as well as serving as thought leaders and facilitators for all these governance groups, to keep us moving in the right direction collectively. I’d probably also say that one of our main goals is to recognize that although we are a system, part of our job isn’t just to support creating system value, it’s also to support our location’s ability to differentiate.
Editor’s note: The University of California’s portion of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2023-2024 Fiscal Year proposed $297 billion budget is nearly $46.4 billion. Per this budget, UC’s portion of the 2022-2023 FY enacted budget was nearly $46.3 billion.
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?
Williams: I would probably say email is the best. I am on LinkedIn and so they can reach out, but I don’t check it very actively. As far as things that they should know about us, I think it’s always really useful to go and check out our websites and take a look at some of the key initiatives that we have going on. I think the other part is that they should know that my job is to facilitate and vision-set, but many of the purchasing decisions are going to always end up being localized. They should be reaching out with one intent, which is, “How do we engage in partnerships that are going to actually be able to support our other locations?” as opposed to trying to engage around making a specific purchasing decision. But if they reach out in that spirit of partnership, I’m always happy to go out there and facilitate and bring all the different stakeholders together and see if we can advance upon something that’s a shared goal.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and brevity.
University CIO: Collaboration, ‘Digital Adjacencies’ Key to Mission
