Franchise Tax Board CIO Cathy Cleek is among five recipients from California of a national award honoring change-makers in public-sector IT.
Government Technology magazine's Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers list for 2017 recognizes individuals and teams for enabling transformation at all levels of their organizations. The annual awards have saluted more than 400 honorees since their inception 16 years ago. Cleek is among 22 individuals and three teams in the 2017 class, which was announced Wednesday morning.
Cleek has been the tax board's CIO for the past 11 years and has worked there in various roles for more than three decades within many of FTB's business lines. She has led the the successful implementation of several big projects, including a business process improvement effort called Enterprise Data to Revenue (EDR). The ambitious project created an enterprise data warehouse, instituted predictive analytics, created digital images of paper tax returns and modernized legacy systems.
Elected officials have called EDR a template for doing a big project the right way. The five-year initiative came in on time, on budget and has helped California collect an additional $3.3 billion of revenue thus far.
The project is a capstone of sorts for Cleek, a sixth-generation Californian who grew up on a farm in Orland and started working for the tax board as an auditor after she graduated college with an accounting degree. She went on to serve in different positions across most of the tax board’s business lines: collections and tax return filing, recruitment, and the call center.
That wide view gave Cleek a unique perspective about how technology can help make the state government more efficient and improve service delivery to customers.
“I really see myself as the solution provider for FTB’s problems. I just happen to use technology to get everyone to work together,” Cleek said.
Four honorees from local government in California also made the Top 25 list: Capt. Chris Hsiung, Mountain View, Calif., Police Department; James Keene, City Manager, Palo Alto, Calif.; Ted Ross CIO and General Manager, Los Angeles Information Technology Agency; Rebecca Woodbury, Senior Management Analyst, San Rafael, Calif.
Techwire recently hosted a virtual conference with Ross, who detailed the work he's doing in Los Angeles. You can listen to that here.
Cleek is also featured in the March 2017 Techwire newsletter.
Editor's note: Government Technology and Techwire are both owned by parent company e.Republic.
