Jablonsky most recently had been with KPMG for almost eight years, serving first as Public Sector West advisory director and then as CIO advisory director. Before joining KPMG, Jablonsky was vice president and executive IT strategist for Performance Technology Partners.
In his new role with VIP, Jablonsky will be chief strategy officer for the Sacramento-based VIP.
“Mostly, it’s going to be business development,” Jablonsky told Techwire. “Certainly, the way the game is changing now, government clients need more platform-based solutions, and more solutions that are based on commercial software and not custom-developed. So a lot of SIs (systems integrators) are really trying to understand how to fulfill that new business model, where you’re delivering Salesforce, ServiceNow — a lot more mature software solutions that don’t involve any custom development whatsoever, so it’s a one-size-fits-all model.”
Jablonsky said he knows how government works and what it needs, based on his years in state government, including having served as deputy director for IT for the California Employment Development Department (EDD) and as assistant executive officer for the IT Services branch of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS). While with the state, Jablonsky was a frequent speaker and participant in industry conferences and forums, and he was recognized among the Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers by Government Technology magazine* in 2012.
Jablonsky said his experience in government helps him relate to his clients in the departments and agencies.
“There’s a lot of issues that go with that,” he said, “because government loves their custom code, and it’s never dealt with anything that’s a one-size-fits-all, so there’s a tremendous amount of business process re-engineering. A lot of SIs are not fully understanding that, and certainly the government clients aren’t fully understanding that. They wonder why their … project isn’t working as advertised, because they didn’t do all that necessary business process re-engineering to conform to the realities of these universal software solutions.
“My job is to talk Venutian and Martian, to both sides of the equation, because vendors are not always speaking the same language that government clients understand. I can speak both languages and really help bridge that typical gap as we embark on this era of solution development.”
Jablonsky said he’s always been driven toward innovating business practices through technology.
“I’ve been very aggressive with transformation, even when I was with the state, whether it was at EDD or CalPERS,” he said. “The reality is that they were relying on 30-year-old technology, and that was not the way that they should be running their business. So I had to spend a lot of time getting them to understand that there’s a better way, and that was not easy. … I’m very excited.”
*Government Technology magazine is a publication of e.Republic, which also produces Techwire.
