The California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency (BCSH) has elevated longtime staffer and executive Jason Piccione, currently the chief information officer at the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), to be its new AIO. Piccione, whose state career began at DCA in 1999, confirmed to Techwire that his first day as AIO was Dec. 1 and said working “with different areas within DCA” throughout his career helped expand his frame of reference and prompted him to seek the AIO position.
At DCA, Piccione worked on projects at DCA boards and bureaus as well as department-wide initiatives and statewide endeavors such as creation of the Bureau of Cannabis Control. His previous initiatives, Piccione told Techwire in 2018, have included work on an IT system for the Bureau for Private Post-Secondary Education in 2000; and implementation of a statewide examination administration system for the Contractors State License Board, which is used by all contractors taking exams. Other projects include a new DCA data portal and work on DCA’s licensing and enforcement system, BreEZe.
“The world started to expand and as my vision expanded, a position like AIO for an agency became interesting for me. And, specifically, BCSH because of my familiarity and experience within its core mission. My vision grew as the initiatives and opportunities that were afforded to me grew. And so, it seemed like a natural, interesting fit for me,” Piccione said.
Asked whether DCA will mount a recruitment for his successor, Piccione said he remains CIO at DCA “for the very near future.” Piccione replaces 30-year state executive Andrew Armani, the former AIO at BCSH and the California Government Operations Agency (GovOps), whose last day was June 30. A GovOps representative told Techwire the agency will begin recruitment for its AIO in January. Among the takeaways, the new BCSH AIO discussed three “general concepts” that may inform upcoming IT projects:
- A continued focus on security and a unified security posture and stance across the agency. Piccione said the effects of cybersecurity issues have been made clear, generally, during the last two weeks, and the ongoing threat posed by bad actors demonstrates an “acute need for a unified approach, a consistent approach for security across the agency that is, of course, in alignment with statewide initiatives.” BCSH and its departments and entities would naturally work directly on any such future projects with the California Department of Technology and its director, state CIO Amy Tong, and the state’s acting Chief Information Security Officer Vitaliy Panych, Piccione added.
- Remote work and telework. The COVID-19 pandemic brought state agencies “thousands and thousands of remote offices.” The question, Piccione said, is how officials continue remote work while ensuring that productivity equals or exceeds in-the-office levels. The answer, he said, has a focus in technology, but also “on the person-centric or the human-centric approach,” and how comfortable staffers can be made in their telework environments, to get the work done. This, he said, will likely require a focus on technology and equipment — but also on collaboration training to ensure employees are comfortable utilizing platforms like Microsoft Teams and the other platforms on which they must rely. Ultimately, the AIO said, officials must broaden their perspective to look at “a landscape of increased telework even after the pandemic.”
- The idea of paper debt, or paperbound processes. This is a topic Piccione and other CIOs addressed Dec. 4 at Techwire’s virtual “State of Technology – CA Industry Forum.” IT leaders frequently discuss technical debt and the idea of aging servers or platforms, but more needs to be done to expose the paper debt — and modernize the many government processes still being done on paper. This should be an interesting endeavor, Piccione said, because it will involve not just updating technology, equipment or platforms — but a “cultural shift at all levels. And I think that’s where … our agency and our state is ready to go. I think circumstances have exposed what we knew was there and we’re ready to start dealing with that.”
