Changes Continue in Welfare Agency Leadership

Change is afoot in the state Office of Systems Integration and its Child Welfare Digital Services project, which has had a number of high-profile leadership changes in recent months:

— In November, OSI Director John Boule left the state and joined the California Automated Consortium Eligibility System (CalACES) Project, a joint-powers agency. This month, Dan Kalamaras was named to succeed him.

— In February, OSI Chief Deputy Deputy Director and CIO Peter Kelly left the office and is consulting. In March, Matt Schueller was named to replace him.

— This month, Penni Clarke, a member of the CWDS Executive Leadership Team and executive liaison to the Child Welfare Directors Association of California, announced that she’ll retire in July. Wendy Christian will succeed her on the team.

— The communications director of the CWDS project, Bill Maile, recently left that position. It’s not clear whether his position will be filled.

— This month, CWDS announced that state IT veteran Becky Stilling had been named CWDS deputy director of the CWS-CARES project. She had been acting OSI director between Boule’s departure and Kalamaras’ appointment.

CWDS is described by state officials as a collaboration of state and local government agencies “dedicated to building a new child welfare information system that responds to users' needs while maintaining the best standards for security and data integrity.”

Stilling will join the CWDS Executive Leadership Team, which also includes Kevin Gaines, deputy director of the California Department of Social Services and Digital Services director for CWDS; and Christian, who will serve in an advisory role until Clarke’s retirement.

In an email interview with Techwire, Stilling was asked about the spate of high-level changes.

“Over the course of time, circumstances in people’s lives result in change for them and that is also true for large-scale IT project like CWS-CARES,” Stilling wrote. “We are deeply grateful for the significant contributions of the leaders who have recently left our project. These will endure as new leaders take their place.”

Stilling described Christian as “a balanced and thoughtful leader,” and one who “has a deep understanding of the day-to-day challenges of Child Welfare workers throughout the state.”

In light of the change, Stilling was asked about the overall outlook for CWDS in the coming months, through the fall gubernatorial election and beyond.

“The mission of the CWDS-CARES project is so compelling that we are confident that it will continue to enjoy the support of the Administration following the elections,” she wrote. “Further, the project approach of using agile software development methodology and planning for modular implementation allows us to scale up or scale down our workload and progress as the State budget priorities are identified by the new administration.”