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OSI Event Draws 100 Job-Seekers for Dozens of Jobs

More than 100 people attended a job fair held Friday by the Office of Systems Integration, vying to speak with representatives from multiple projects in the OSI family, including Child Welfare Digital Services, the California Women Infants and Children program, Welfare Data Tracking Implementation Project and the Statewide Automated Welfare System.

More than 100 people attended a job fair held Friday by the Office of Systems Integration at the Child Welfare Digital Services building, vying to speak with representatives from multiple projects in the OSI family, including CWDS, the California Women Infants and Children program, Welfare Data Tracking Implementation Project and the Statewide Automated Welfare System.

Some of the jobs that OSI officials were discussing with the attendees included Senior Information Systems Analyst with CWDS, Data Processing Manager and Staff Programmer Analyst with WDTIP, Information Systems Analyst with the Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) project, and attorney positions with the legal division of OSI. 

“We are at the bleeding edge of trying to transform government,” said OSI Director John Boule. “If you think government can be done better, talk to us today.” He said he hoped to encourage an environment at OSI where mistakes could be made and learned from, and told the crowd to ask questions of the OSI staff members who were at the fair.

“We have a monumental mission,” Boule said; OSI staffers oversee the welfare systems that nearly one in three Californians use on a regular basis. But, he added, “We have systems that are state-of-the-art for 1989. So we’re making some changes.”

Donna Landon, a project manager who previously worked for HP, said she was at the job fair looking to do something similar to her previous jobs, and was particularly interested in the new SAWS portal. Landon was able to speak directly to SAWS Deputy Director Suman Biswas about development of the portal and other questions. 

“There are so many [job] openings,” Landon said. “I’ve been watching the website and there are so many coming up soon, too.”

One table in particular was always busy: There are nearly 50 positions open now at CWDS, said CWDS Project Director Tony Fortenberry. The project staff hosted the fair in their offices at 2870 Gateway Oaks Drive, Sacramento, and were leading tours upstairs around their new facility for interested guests. “There’s a lot of activity around bringing people into state service,” he said. CWDS in particular is working on a Child Welfare Services — New System (CWS-NS) agile project, which is “ramping up” and will require mass hirings of IT professionals now and over the course of the next few years. Hence, the number of positions that are opening up. 

Fortenberry said CDWS' agile CWS-NS project is considered a “demonstration” project for hiring multiple vendors to develop the software, rather than just using one vendor, and these job openings represent the first and largest hiring block that will be made at the department for the CWS-NS project. Fortenberry said that he was excited by Friday’s turnout, and that CWDS is hoping to “entice people into state service,” so that they might act as an incubator for other agile and IT projects at OSI. 

One of the benefits of attending the job fair was a computer lab at the back of the room, staffed with OSI HR representatives to help and encourage attendees with the process of applying to the state jobs. The staffers were busy during the entire event, as applicants patiently lined up along a wall to wait their turn in the computer lab. 

“Really, this is about people connecting with our staff,” said Peter Kelly, OSI chief deputy director, in a speech to the assembled crowd. “It’s as much you interviewing us as us interviewing you.”