One of the tasks in front of the new California Project Management Office is to develop a statewide IT practitioner database. The system would, in theory, help coalesce information about experienced project managers working in state agencies and departments scattered across the state and facilitate sharing of expertise.
State CIO Carlos Ramos hopes the database will eventually help develop a pipeline and career path for civil servants who want to specialize in project management.
But first, California has to actually build the database. The fundamental question: Should the state build it custom or leverage an existing platform?
Two state officials weighed in with their perspective during last month’s State of Technology Industry Forum in Sacramento:
California Department of Justice CIO Adrian Farley said a custom-built solution sounds appealing because it can be built exactly to the state’s specifications. But a commercial platform might make more sense.
“Let’s go to the place where people are, whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or whatever it might be — leverage those platforms that exist — and build the kinds of frameworks there rather than building something new,” Farley said.
California Department of Technology chief deputy director of operations Chris Cruz shared a similar sentiment. The California Public Employees’ Retirement Systems (CalPERS) is currently using a practitioner-type database, Cruz said, that maybe could be leveraged across state government and modified as needed when new requirements arise.
“Again, I think if we need to build these things from scratch, they’re very complicated, they present a high level of risk moving forward – and we probably don’t want to put ourselves in that situation,” Cruz said.
CalPERS built its professional networking system in-house and launched it in 2015. The site, called Illuminet – an amalgam of "illuminate" and "network" — was built internally by IT staff and will be copyrighted to preserve its integrity, CalPERS CIO Liana Bailey-Crimmins said last year.
"It does have a little bit of a LinkedIn feel, but it really takes it quite a bit further because it has a mentor matchmaker; it allows people to list their desired skills in addition to the skills they already have, and it allows people to rate themselves," she said.
Users can also endorse others and use a search function that brings up top skills in the entire database. Bailey-Crimmins said the California Department of Human Resources (CalHR) is very interested in the system’s potential.
