Editor’s note: Following is one in an ongoing series of profiles of the largest California state government agencies.
The University of California system has about $1.5 billion for technology across 10 campuses and six hospital systems. That includes ongoing and administrative costs, as well as new procurements. The system’s overall budget is “more than $30 billion,” according to the system’s CIO, Tom Andriola.
The UC system provides education and health services throughout the state of California. This includes providing student information portals, financial aid and enrollment applications, patient information systems and data maintenance. The system also gathers data for research, especially in health-related topics.
“In any organization, there’s challenges with budgets,” Andriola said in an interview with Techwire. “We’re trying to be smarter about the way we run our infrastructure.”
Streamlining infrastructure and associated costs, he said, will allow the system to put more money toward cloud services, analytics, applications and machine learning.
“We’re not getting more money to do that, but we’re finding ways to reduce cost for things like storage, servers and network gear in order to recruit that money to invest into higher-value activities,” Andriola said.
The system procures through RFPs, some of which are statewide and some specific to one or two campuses. The current technology goal is to find an integrated tool to identify threats to information security, especially its 15 million health records. Campuses are also investing in advanced machine learning and high-power computing.
“In California, our research enterprise represents close to $5 billion in funding,” Andriola said. “Having the capabilities to support our faculty so when they go out to compete for those grants, they are in a competitive position,” is a focus for the university.
CIO, University of California – Tom Andriola
Contact info: Tom.Andriola@ucop.edu
