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Reminder: OTech Chief Robert Schmidt Scheduled for Confirmation Hearing This Afternoon

In September, Schmidt was appointed the chief of the Office of Technology Services (OTech) at the Department of Technology. Schmidt had been the agency CIO and director of Executive Office/IT Services at Food and Agriculture since 2011.

Office of Technology Services chief Robert Schmidt is scheduled to appear Monday afternoon, June 20, in front of the Senate Rules Committee for his confirmation hearing. The hearing is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m.

Gubernatorial appointees such as Schmidt must be approved by a Senate floor vote no later than a year after they are named to a position. The Rules Committee confirmation hearing and vote is the penultimate step in the process.

In September, Schmidt was appointed the chief of the Office of Technology Services (OTech) at the Department of Technology. Schmidt had been the agency CIO and director of Executive Office/IT Services at Food and Agriculture since 2011.

According to the governor’s office, he was principal of statewide IT consolidation at the Department of Technology from 2009 to 2011, and a system software specialist at the California Franchise Tax Board from 1999 to 2009 and at the California Department of Technology from 1996 to 1999, where he was an associate system software specialist from 1995 to 1996.

Schmidt earned an MBA from California State University, Sacramento, and recently was studying innovation through a program at Stanford.

At OTech, Schmidt oversees about 600 staff and a budget north of $300 million. The office provisions servers, cloud computing, application hosting, telecommunications and other IT services for approximately 500 customers in state and local government and education.

Onboarding customers to CalCloud, the state's private cloud, continues to be an area of emphasis for OTech. The state also is adding more vendor-hosted solutions to its cloud. In March the state said 60 government entities have become CalCloud customers.

Schmidt replaced Davood Ghods at OTech.