California governments have faced tough decisions on technology and finance from the start of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; and the May Revision of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed state budget, due Thursday, should bring their situations into sharper focus.
This pandemic is virtually unique in its impact on state and local departments’ IT, and in terms of how they are able to meet its demands: Gov tech has never had more tools in its toolbox during previous natural disasters, Y2K or the Great Recession than it does now. Several former state and county IT leaders offered Techwire best practices, lessons learned and perspectives garnered from their own experience in the trenches to those who are shaping government’s response to this crisis. This article is the first of two parts. Among the takeaways:
• This pandemic has lasted longer than any statewide power outage and had a much greater impact than SARS, said Teri Takai, now co-director of the Center for Digital Government* (CDG). She was state chief information officer (CIO) from November 2007 through November 2010. The pandemic also emerged far quicker than the Great Recession, which “came on over a period of two years and there was a gradual period of cutbacks and then recovery.”
“The impact of the budget crisis is going to be very similar,” Takai said, indicating cuts will likely come to current IT spending as well as new and ongoing IT projects. “In the case of this recovery, technology could be seen as important and spending may not decrease as much, but will be directed at responding to the pandemic rather than projects that were underway.”
Regardless of how dire Newsom’s budget revise is, the situation now is quite different financially than during the Great Recession — because roughly 90 days ago, the state was projecting a $6 billion surplus, said Paul Benedetto, now principal at PMB Consulting Services LLC. He was the undersecretary of operations at the California Technology Agency (CTA) — precursor to the California Department of Technology — from September 2011 through October 2013, and director of the Office of Systems Integration (OSI) at the California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS) from September 2008 through August 2011. Also, said Benedetto, even should the state face the budget shortfall of $54.3 billion that Newsom’s office projected last week, that deficit will be spread over two fiscal years.
“It’s really about what cash we have on hand for this fiscal year. It’s not going to be $54 billion,” Benedetto said, adding: “Next year will probably be worse than this year.”
• Telework wasn’t unknown on Jan. 1, 2000, as Y2K dawned, or during subsequent disastrous wildfires or earthquakes, or even during the Great Recession. But with the advent of cloud computing, agile development and the ability to deep-dive into big data, technology has proven its maturity and worth. That makes it a much more versatile tool than it was during the Great Recession, said Shell Culp, senior adviser with Public Consulting Group and former CDG senior fellow.
“I would imagine this time around, we would be looking for IT projects that can help us get through budget shortfalls in ways that may be less painful,” said Culp, who was CIO at the California Department of Toxic Substances Control from April 2006 through May 2009 and, more recently, interim director and chief deputy director of OSI from September 2011 through June 2014.
During crises, it’s “even more critical to show the value of IT” and how it contributes to a department’s overall mission, said Joe Panora, CEO of Panora Associates Inc. and agency CIO with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) from January 2008 through December 2014. At CDCR, officials did an IT survey, measured employee satisfaction and what services were critical to them, then compared this to existing service levels to determine adjustments. A strong IT Governance Council addressed “Keeping the Lights On” issues like maintaining the existing IT environment project portfolio. Officials scrutinized hardware, software, applications and contracts to find opportunities for consolidation or elimination, said Panora, a CDG senior fellow. They also did a Resource Baseline Study which they compared to corrections departments in four states.
• Officials suggested focusing on what IT can do for residents and how it can do that better, or on which IT projects most impact the community and the greater good.
“I know it’s not a popular opinion, but stop worrying about the customer experience and start focusing on delivering services quickly and efficiently,” said Ron Hughes, who is president of RLH Consulting Group. Hughes, who retired from CDT as chief deputy CIO in 2014, after 22 years at the state including nearly two years as director of the Office of Technology Services (OTech), doesn’t care what a website looks like. He told Techwire he cares how it works, “and I think a lot of times that gets lost when you have people designing these websites."
"Hopefully, this COVID-19 thing will spur some innovation, spur them to do more things online, more things remotely,” said Hughes, who led Y2K testing at the state years earlier.
Benedetto agreed — citing that general idea as something he wished he had focused on more clearly during the Great Recession.
“I can tell you what I think, we could have done better in 2008 in not only doubling down on technology, but making sure that when we double down on technology, that the technology was focused on the citizens and not the people working for the state,” he said.
W. Harold Tuck, who was CIO for San Diego County from 2008 to 2012, and one of Government Technology magazine’s** Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers of 2011, used community impact and impact on the greater good as factors to help determine whether IT projects got cut during the Great Recession. San Diego County outsourced its IT to Northrop Grumman at the time, with subcontracts with Hewlett-Packard and AT&T, so some new initiatives went to the vendor — but the agency was coming off a year of ruinous wildfires when the recession hit and still made some tough calls.
“It wasn’t smooth; we had dogfights,” said Tuck, also a CDG senior fellow, recalling how officials tried to convince leaders that their projects deserved to continue, “but if they couldn’t convince their peers … it became their burden, and not mine.”
*The Center for Digital Government is part of e.Republic, parent company of Techwire.
**Government Technology magazine is a publication of e.Republic, which also produces Techwire.
