Monica Kress-Wooster, Caltrans’ longtime assistant division chief in charge of project management, became the agency’s interim broadband manager at the end of February and told Techwire it will hire a broadband coordinator later this year. Gov. Gavin Newsom highlighted the significance of high-speed Internet in the Broadband for All plan in his proposed Fiscal Year 2020-2021 state budget.
“We absolutely heard that message,” Kress-Wooster said. Among the takeaways:
• In the posting, which closed Feb. 10, Caltrans sought a Broadband Facilities Program Coordinator for 24 months, indicating the job could become permanent. Per the listing, the new coordinator will work under the direction of the department’s deputy division chief from its Division of Design — and be responsible for “planning, organizing, and managing multi-disciplinary teams” from Caltrans divisions to “develop statewide policies, procedures, and standards for deployment of third party broadband facilities on state highway right-of-way.” That includes 5G.
The successful candidate will also represent the agency to stakeholders, to “ensure a strategic approach for deploying broadband to rural and under-served communities,” and must be a subject matter expert on “applicable broadband federal and state regulations.” The position classification is a Supervising Transportation Engineer for the agency, and the salary range is $11,863 to $13,476 per month.
• Caltrans repurposed an internal position to create the job, then advertised it internally, seeking applicants who had a “permanent civil service appointment” within its agency. That included work as supervising civil engineers, supervising electrical engineers and supervising planners, said Kress-Wooster, who updated the California Broadband Council on Friday about the job search. Broadband, she told Techwire, isn’t merely a technological issue or challenge — but touches on policy, practice and funding. Accordingly, the department needed an experienced hand who could connect various disciplines as needed. Caltrans will likely reach a final decision and on board the successful candidate within the next “couple of months,” she said.
• The potential for the agency to use high-speed digital communications to conduct its business is exciting, she added, indicating that could be anything from intelligent transportation systems to high-resolution cameras to connected vehicles.
“We will be providing information from roadside antennas, that’s the paradigm now, who knows what it could be in the future,” she said.
