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Dean Gialamas, a familiar face in Southern California IT circles, has been tapped as the next IT bureau chief and CIO for the Los Angeles Police Department.
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Techwire is pleased to welcome Tenable to the Techwire family. Tenable “helps state and local government agencies meet many of the technical requirements for handling sensitive citizen information while providing cost savings, resource efficiencies and better visibility into risk and cyber exposure across the entire enterprise environment.” In addition, it helps agencies — as well as large and small companies — “reduce their attack surfaces and wisely manage risk by identifying, monitoring, and prioritizing vulnerabilities across the entire network — including on-premises, cloud, mobile and virtual environments.” For more information, visit tenable.com or contact Patrick Meister.
“Given the whole environment, we decided to take a step back and much more closely align our work with the overall organization; and rather than do a strategic plan, we said, ‘These are our priorities for the next two years until we can realign with the next CalPERS strategic plan,’” says Chief Information Officer Christian Farland.
Tim Howell is the new executive in charge of state, local and education in the West. Tanium vice president Jennifer Axt, meanwhile, has an expanded role with the company, overseeing SLED for the U.S.
The auditor’s update to the governor and the Legislature repeats previous themes: FI$Cal has, in effect, moved the goal posts on what constitutes completion of the transition to the $1 billion system, and that uncertainty may create financial problems for the state.
Ticketing and trip-planning across some half-dozen transit providers in San Joaquin County have been brought under one app, allowing for an easy jump for riders moving from one system to another.
Working with the state and a technology company, six California counties have gone live with a new system that lets residents request reductions to fines for minor traffic offenses online. A seventh county is preparing to go live. The system has the potential to serve all 58 counties and to move other legacy tasks online.
The changes wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic have forced government technologists and leaders to adapt — but how many of these changes will endure? And what opportunities are emerging for technology vendors as a result?
Techwire is pleased to welcome Information Design Consultants Inc. to the Techwire family. IDCI is a certified small business and W/D/MBE firm. It offers consulting services in areas including project management, information systems planning and implementation, and business process design. IDCI’s approach and guidance helps increase the adoption of changes by minimizing disruption to organizational culture and promoting healthy engagement. Clients and partners include the city and port of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Deloitte and San Diego International Airport. For more information visit idcinc.net or contact Debra A. Hunter.
“This might sound self-aggrandizing, but I think many in the state will continue and look to develop those relationships with the vendor community and there will be a greater trust,” says Paul Benedetto, former undersecretary of operations at the California Technology Agency (CTA) — California Department of Technology (CDT) precursor — and owner of PMB Consulting Services.
The Sacramento-based technologist had most recently served as director and practice lead for CGI’s Lean-agile DevOps in the Western U.S. In his new role as director of the company's Health and Human Services Practice, he'll be working with CGI offices nationally to “amplify patterns of success.”
The California Department of Technology’s top five most expensive purchases of IT goods throughout 2020 totaled more than $57 million and reflected several volume buys.
In a stunning procession in December, California lost the leadership of three iconic firms — Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle and Tesla — all to Texas. In addition, many California tech firms, including Uber and Lyft, as well as Apple, have been shifting jobs outside the state.
“The new norms will be different among government agencies; however, the theme will be the same: The work is what you do, not where you are,” says Jay Song, chief information officer for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is looking for “Business Consulting Services and Lotus Notes Technical Support Services” that will include “development of a plan to migrate from a legacy Lotus Notes implementation.”
A public-facing state agency is seeking a chief information security officer, and a key California municipality is recruiting for a chief data officer.
Rita L. Saenz has been appointed as director of the Employment Development Department. The governor reappointed Marybel Batjer as president of the California Public Utilities Commission and Adam Dondro as deputy secretary and agency chief information officer for the California Health and Human Services Agency.
A Lodi staff member discussed last year’s ransomware attack and offered takeaways from the recovery and the city’s purchase of a solution from Rubrik.
“Now, between DGS and CDT, we’ve got a stronger relationship and alignment than we’ve ever had. Our (state) CIO, Amy Tong, her team, our team with Angela Shell ... I think we’ve got things really nailed down."
The state Employment Development Department, in collaboration with the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, seeks a contractor to assess business systems and recommend a future-leaning “technology platform.”
“Marlon’s hard work to modernize state technology procurement has delivered excellent results,” said state Chief Information Officer Amy Tong. “We view his new position with Santa Clara County as an extension of the good work he began at CDT.”
More than a dozen IT leaders from across the nation -- including six with California connections -- show off their culinary chops in a compendium of holiday food and drink.
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Insights from Prodigy Consulting on preparing Microsoft 365 environments for Copilot through data governance, user training and change management.
Forrester just published The Forrester Wave — Cloud Native Application Protection Solutions, an independent evaluation of 14 vendors in the CNAPP market. Wiz was named the Leader and received the highest score!
Technological innovation in artificial intelligence has shifted. For the better part of a decade, AI operated within tightly bounded constraints: classifying images, generating text, and using these capabilities to surface recommendations. While these systems were powerful, they were fundamentally passive. They needed to receive a prompt in order to return a result. Once the result was achieved, the system stopped.
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