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Silicon Valley City Augments Its C-Suite

Silicon Valley's largest city is adding a deputy chief information officer with a special focus, and is still seeking to fill a similar C-level position.

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Silicon Valley’s largest city continues to augment its leadership, with the addition of a veteran employee and IT staffer who joins a team of five and will eventually be part of a C-suite duo still being assembled.

San Jose CIO Rob Lloyd confirmed to Techwire that the city has promoted Amanda Le to deputy CIO for infrastructure and operations. Her first day was July 1. “She’s a truly valued team member and colleague for us,” Lloyd said via email. During a 21-year career with the city, Le has filled a variety of roles including time with the police department and at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport. But for the past three years, she’s been part of Lloyd’s IT Executive Team, helping implement the city’s 2017-2019 IT Strategic Plan and shape “long-term directions” for its Infrastructure and Operations Division, according to an internal announcement of her new role. Among the takeaways:

• During her time at San Jose, Le told Techwire, she’s been able to “collect all of that knowledge and experience” to improve the city’s IT infrastructure, identifying opportunities to consolidate and combine services, reducing cost “as well as improving system-wide availability and performance.”

“Some of the vision that we had in play is trying to build a much stronger robust platform to support the core infrastructure services. Especially that when we have a lot of cybersecurity threats. We want to make sure staff scales up to support the environment as well as establishes cybersecurity best practice,” Le said, noting the city strives to refresh aging equipment in a timely fashion.

• As her title implies, Le said her priorities are chiefly twofold. In infrastructure operations, she’ll work to ensure the city applies “the latest and greatest if we have the opportunity to refresh.” And when San Jose adds staff, Le will ensure new hires have the appropriate technical and leadership skills, and she'll provide a focus on employment management.

• Another project Le is involved with is a hyper-converge refresh for city servers and storage. San Jose completed an RFP about six months ago and is now finalizing a contract with SHI, the chosen vendor. The new deputy CIO said she’s targeting September to finish the contract and begin technical implementation.

“One of the challenges that we have in our environment is computing capacity. With the aging of the infrastructure and a lot of isolation of the server environment and storage environment, we have demands for space and resources,” Le said.

• San Jose continues to seek a deputy chief information officer to head its Business Solutions Division, Lloyd said via email. The division is now undergoing a “strategic rebuild” according to the job posting. The successful candidate will “inspire team members” and grow a collaborative, customer-centric culture.

“Additionally, the City will see continued growth in its smart cities and Internet-of-Things solutions portfolios the coming years. This IT leader will play a key role in helping to define those paths,” the listing said. Whoever is hired will also work very closely with Le.

“We will be a team,” she said. Lloyd’s executive team currently includes Le, Chief Information Security Officer Marcelo Peredo; Assistant CIO Jerry Driessen, who manages the city’s business solutions and product-project divisions; and Administrative Officer Claudia Chang.

Theo Douglas is Assistant Managing Editor of Industry Insider — California.