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California Begins Search for New Chief Procurement Officer

California is looking for a new chief procurement officer after longtime appointee Jim Butler left in April.

California is looking for a new Chief Procurement Officer after longtime appointee Jim Butler left in April.

Butler, who has become well known in California's IT community, left the role after serving the state for nine years. Prior to that he was director of Procurement Services at Levi Strauss & Co.

Butler attended Brigham Young University for his undergraduate and MBA education, graduating in 1993. He has joined the Mormon Church as a Director of Global Sourcing.

Ricardo Martinez is serving as acting director of the DGS Procurement Division until a permanent replacement is identified and appointed by the Brown administration.

The chief procurement officer’s main focus is to coordinate all parts of the purchasing power of the state of California. The procurement process overseen by the chief includes the purchase of goods and services.

Butler often oversaw ways to improve that procurement process through multiple administrations.

Several projects Butler was responsible for include multiple waves of FI$Cal releases to modernize the procurement system, shortening the process timeline to three months and changes to how IT procurement takes place.

The IT procurement changes included a project to reclassify and add 19 job classifications to the state’s IT departments. Along with the addition of job classifications such as agile coach, updating the Master Service Agreement also included opening the state up to agile development for software. The state has considered software as a service (SaaS) through cloud delivery since 2014 and began adjusting terms and conditions for that model in 2014. The agile development and SaaS processes are still being worked out as Butler led the way for the MSA changes to support it into February 2017.

Kayla Nick-Kearney was a staff writer for Techwire from March 2017 through January 2019.