The recipients of the State Technology Innovator Award included Rick Klau, California’s chief technology innovation officer and the California Department of Technology’s deputy director for the Office of Enterprise Technology. Klau, who was most recently with Google, joined the public sector after volunteering to help state government with COVID-19-related vaccination data.
Since being asked to join the team in early 2021, he has overseen the creation of digital vaccine records as well as the state’s Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Record portal. (Klau was featured in a recent virtual Techwire Member Briefing.)
The other two innovation honorees were Dale Richardson, chief operations officer for the Texas Department of Information Resources, who was recognized for leadership during both the COVID-19 pandemic and the Texas winter storm of 2021; and Julia Richman, deputy executive director for the Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology, who helped support over 32,000 state employees as they transitioned to remote work.
California was also among the recipients of the 2021 NASCIO State IT Recognition Awards, which spotlight the use of IT in problem-solving and improving government service delivery. It received the State CIO Office Special Recognition Award for My Turn: California’s Front Door to Vaccine Access. (The director of the California Department of Technology (CDT), state Chief Information Officer Amy Tong, posted a video message Wednesday about My Turn on CDT’s Tech Blog.)
More information on the award recipients can be found on NASCIO’s website.
This article was excerpted from Government Technology magazine, a sister publication of Techwire. Find GT’s NASCIO coverage here.
