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The Secretary of State’s Office published a newsletter this week with an update of the rollout of the CAL-ACCESS Replacement System (CARS). It has also updated its website to include key mileposts and timelines of interest to vendors and other stakeholders.

Acting on an order from Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Independent System Operator, the California Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission last week released a preliminary root-cause analysis into the first rolling blackouts in California since 2001.

The agency's chief technology officer, Enrique Parker, said, “If you are an innovative and collaborative information security practitioner, this role may be what you are looking for.” The position oversees a budget between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Recruitment for the eight-week course, which closes today, has generated a robust response to the offering, funded by a grant from the city of Sacramento through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

Where a traditional state software shop would buy products and licenses from vendors and then pay another company to integrate those components into a system, the technologists on the Factory team write some software, buy some, and then integrate it themselves.

Techwire is pleased to welcome F5 Networks to the Techwire family. F5 Networks specializes in delivering and protecting applications — revenue-generating, brand-anchoring applications — from the point at which they are created through the point when consumers interact with them. “When you combine F5 & NGINX’s expertise in powering over half of the world’s applications across all types of environments, with Shape’s insight from mitigating over 1 billion application attacks per day, you have a company that knows how to deliver and secure more applications, and more value, than any company in the industry,” the company says. “This makes the combined forces of F5, NGINX, and Shape absolutely essential to every digital organization in the world, including the world’s largest enterprises, service providers, financial and educational institutions, government entities, and consumer brands.” For more information, visit F5 Networks or contact Marcus Charles via email.

The state agency needed some help in a hurry when it got $25 million from Facebook to give to nurses amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Pondera Solutions, a Thomson Reuters company, stepped up and did background checks on 50,000 people in a matter of days.

The California Department of Technology seeks contractors as it looks to renew its existing Hewlett Packard Enterprise Datacenter Care Service pact on its Microsoft Windows equipment.

Departments seeking to fill IT positions include the California Department of Justice, the California State Lottery, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Managed Health Care.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed several pieces of technology and innovation legislation, which will now become law — and vetoed others, while, in at least one case, using their intent to refine state operations.

STIR Labs works to pair local universities with government agencies in the service of applying academic expertise to community challenges, thereby improving government functions while giving researchers real-world situations to address.

Chad Crowe, chief information officer at the California Department of Human Resources, discusses the many aspects of his work, an ongoing cross-agency Enterprise Human Resources effort, and speeding up procurement.

The Employment Development Department has paid more than $93.8 billion in unemployment benefits since March and processed more than 13.6 million claims. But the volume has overwhelmed the agency, and a report last month showed that 1.6 million people were still waiting for claims to be resolved.

The system will use technology that detects, monitors and provides real-time truck parking availability using “roadside dynamic message signs, smartphone and in-cab applications and online via websites and traveler information sites.” The system will track available truck parking at 37 public rest areas and 550 parking spaces throughout the four states that make up the I-10 Corridor Coalition.

The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services has announced a new campaign to educate residents on Earthquake Warning California, the state’s earthquake warning system. Equipment to inform that system continues to be installed, but the endeavor has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Department of Financial Protection and Innovation's new Market Monitoring, Consumer Research, Insights and Analytics Office – itself part of a new Division -- will probably account for most purchases of IT products and services, as the function will be built from scratch.

Remote-working employees "didn’t always have all the security protection we had on our network,” said San Francisco's cybersecurity architect, Eddie Gardner. "We had to work with our vendors to fine-tune because they were really easy to get through.”

The new tool, from Virginia cybersecurity firm ID.me, is expected to reduce the percentage of new claims being flagged for manual processing verification to 10 percent and increase the speed at which new claims are paid.

Officials from the California Department of Technology, whose director, Amy Tong, chairs the California Broadband Council, updated the California State Board of Food and Agriculture on their progress in creating a new State Broadband Action Plan this year.

The nation's second-busiest container port recently won recognition from a global trade association for bringing technology to bear on two key processes around ship movement and docking.

Sanguinetti has extensive experience in helping government agencies accelerate organizational change. Before joining VIP, he had been affiliated with Accela and Oracle.