Their remarks, during a virtual panel discussion among “Combined Rural & Urban Counties” at the California County Information Services Directors Association (CCISDA) Fall 2020 Conference, highlighted the accomplishments of several of California’s 58 counties during the crisis and the challenges they face — and provided some glimpses into what may lie ahead in the fourth quarter and next year. Among the takeaways:
• IT departments “came in like heroes,” said panelist Rami Zakaria, Sacramento County CIO and CCISDA's second vice president and program chair, noting staff were able to very quickly set up virtual private networks (VPN) for employees — as numbers in Sacramento County jumped from 100-200 people working remote per day to around 3,500 using the VPN. The county quickly created a document indicating telework would be allowed during the pandemic — but spelling out that staff should try to adhere to their regular work hours and “be accessible.” Currently, Sacramento County is rotating roughly 50 percent of its staff in and out of the office on a weekly basis and is about 65 percent “in the office” in total, Zakaria said. Shasta County’s numbers also rose dramatically, from several hundred accounts on “concurrent” VPN licensing to more than 1,000, said panelist Thomas Schreiber, Shasta County CIO and CCISDA secretary/treasurer. Shasta fast-tracked a pact with DocuSign to enable e-signature, he said. Mono County IT Director Nate Greenberg noted the demands that remote work places on people “from a broadband connection standpoint,” pointing out it’s not always successful.
• The pandemic has presented an opportunity for IT, Zakaria said — echoing recent comments by San Jose Chief Information Security Officer Dr. Marcelo Peredo. But, Zakaria added, “in a sense, we need to transform now to something new.” If anything, the CIO said, it’s proof that “we need to be agile,” which could require a change of culture. IT understands, but other departments and entities may not, he said. Remote work has improved communication in some cases, Zakaria said, and Santa Cruz County Assistant Director of Information Services Tibi McCann agreed — saying sometimes she’s better informed on what her team is doing since moving to remote work.
• Productivity and collaboration have yielded varied results during the pandemic, and panelists and attendees identified positive and not-so-positive outcomes. Zakaria described his experience as “a little bit of a mixed bag” and said collaboration and productivity can suffer and lose value when staffers have to rely on online chat and emails. Calaveras County Deputy County Administrative Officer and CIO Stan Moore described a “tremendous overall success” with productivity and said using Slack to communicate often feels “not materially different” than when “everyone was sitting in the bullpen at the same time.” He credited Palo Alto Networks’ GlobalProtect solution with empowering the ramp-up of remote work and VPN use — but also noted that, after seven months, burnout can be “a real issue.” Schreiber said Shasta County’s programming staff is mostly remote, but added the crisis’s impact to productivity may be debatable as they’re meeting timelines on resolutions.
• The coronavirus crisis and remote work aren’t likely to end in the next two to three months, Zakaria said, echoing other CCISDA sessions. Santa Clara County IT Director Dan Baldree noted his agency’s Emergency Operations Center is still in operation and the county has been “pretty well-resourced” — but estimated employees won’t return to the office until June or July 2021 — something Zakaria said he thinks is “a consistent message we’re hearing from everybody.”
• The pandemic’s effects will likely have brought about some degree of permanent change, Schreiber and Orange County CIO Joel Golub agreed. Schreiber said he thinks his county may maintain “a more permanent remote” workforce afterward — a change in attitude considering officials have previously mounted some opposition to remote work. Golub said this may forever be the new normal — but pointed out the opportunities presented by COVID-19 may be something counties can capitalize on going forward.
“It’s more flexible infrastructure, it’s more flexible workforce, it’s going to be more flexible licensing. Every time we go out for a product, we’re going to be thinking in the back of our minds, ‘Can we scale it?’ We should have been thinking that way, but now we have real-life experience,” Golub said.
