California's enacted state budget for the 2016-17 fiscal year, which began on July 1, contains several items of interest related to technology, systems, data and cybersecurity.
Here's a roundup of noteworthy inclusions in the main budget bill and related trailer bills:
1. The budget includes $1.6 million from the state Technology Services Revolving Fund and 11 positions to audit more departments for information security risk and compliance. California is now required by statute to audit at least 36 departments each year.
2. The budget also includes another $1.7 million from the Technology Services Revolving Fund and 12 positions to support the Department of Technolgy's project approval, oversight and procurement processes for IT projects.
3. For California Community Colleges (CCC), $20 million in one-time funding will go toward efforts to "expand student access to online courses that can be counted toward their degrees, using the CCC online course exchange," according to the Department of Finance. A separate $15 million increase will address data security efforts and expand broadband capacity on community college campuses.
4. Within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, more than $4 million is earmarked for a technology solution to help the department track an "offender’s rehabilitative life cycle and begin implementing performance‑based contracting for rehabilitative services, and $4.1 million General Fund ($10.6 million in 2017‑18 and $4.2 million ongoing) "to provide secured Internet access at all institutions to allow inmates participating in career technical education courses."
5. A budget trailer bill clarifies how a track-and- trace system for medical marijuana industry will be implemented, and the roles of agencies and departments. The California Department of Food and Agriculture, in partnership with the state's new Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation, "shall establish a track and trace program for reporting the movement of medical cannabis items throughout the distribution chain that utilizes a unique identifier. An electronic database will contain electronic shipping manifests. The Board of Equalization will have read access to the database for taxation purposes, and the data will be sharable with law enforcement.
6. Another budget trailer bill authorizes the creation of the Department of FI$Cal "upon the acceptance of the Financial Information System for California (FI$Cal) by the state." The enterprise project is becoming its own stand-alone department.
7. A trailer bill also appears to add a layer of oversight to the state's endeavor to use agile development to modernize California's child welfare system. Among the requirements: a quarterly forum to provide project updates to stakeholders and legislative staff, including "lessons learned" from the project and how they could be used by other state IT projects.
