A state agency with major oversight of California’s food, animals and crops is poised for what will likely be an ongoing series of foundational modernizations, officials said recently.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) works closely with the state’s $54 billion agricultural industry and more than 76,000 farms and ranches — and its Office of Information Technology Services provides support to more than 2,000 employees across seven major programs, as well as to executive and administrative staff, Agency Information Officer Jennifer Chan said July 25 at a Techwire Member Briefing. She and CDFA CIO Rob Peterson said the agency is due for significant infrastructure and security updates as well as a culture change — all to facilitate a deepened use of technology and strengthen their respective areas. Among the takeaways:
• Modernizing infrastructure is his No. 1 priority, Peterson told Techwire afterward, noting: “I can’t build, I can’t put new applications on an infrastructure that is not secure, not reliable.” Officials are engaged in patching the existing infrastructure; but the CIO said the need is for new enterprise-level architecture that can address “common functionalities and common services between different divisions.” This is no small task, given the potential for siloing in legacy systems, a previous emphasis on custom apps built in-house — and the fact that a portion of CDFA’s funding model is through advisory boards perhaps most closely attuned to the needs of their particular area of industry. Fees comprise another major funding source.
• A culture change also has to happen, somewhat simultaneously with an infrastructure update, Peterson and Chan said. The AIO described the process as “hand-in-hand,” indicating new robust processes and procedures won’t be effective without a cultural shift toward enterprise-level architecture.
“We’ve got to do that together, simultaneously as a group, and that has to come down from management as well,” Chan said.
• An update to the agency’s Emerging Threats Information System, Emerging Threats II, has just secured initial funding, Chan said, and should also be an enterprise-level initiative. The project is currently initiating its PAL Stage Gate II level and, she said, could require another two years of analysis and market research. Peterson described it as a “very large project,” similar in type to the Franchise Tax Board’s enterprise data revenue project — though not in scale. Emerging Threats II will interface with around 28 applications, he added, emphasizing there will be a great deal of data to clean and convert.
• Among CDFA’s ongoing projects is a so-called citrus surveyor, to support its Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Committee — the agency’s newest division, established July 1. This application, designed primarily for mobile use, will collect data from field inspectors who go property to property to inspect citrus trees and collect samples.
“All the data that’s been entered into the IOS application will be sent back to a server. It also ties in directly with our GIS mapping, so we know exactly where areas have set, where (Huanglongbing) HLG has been detected,” Peterson said, referring to the citrus disease caused by the Asian citrus psyllid. The agency recently issued an RFI for the project.
