The California State Senate on Thursday voted 37 to 0 to confirm Robert Schmidt as the chief of the Office of Technology Services.
Schmidt has headed the Office of Technology Services (OTech) at the Department of Technology since Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to the role in September 2015.
As OTech chief, Schmidt oversees about 600 staff and a budget of more than $300 million. Among his top priorities is the migration of state agencies and departments to the state’s private cloud, known as CalCloud. The office also provisions servers, application hosting, telecommunications and other IT services for approximately 500 customers in state and local government and education.
Prior to his appointment, Schmidt was the agency CIO for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. He also has served as director of Executive Office/IT Services at the agency, and principal of statewide IT consolidation at the Department of Technology. He worked as a system software specialist at the California Franchise Tax Board and at the California Department of Technology, according to the governor’s office.
Schmidt earned an MBA from California State University, Sacramento. He replaced Davood Ghods at OTech.
