California’s CIO Office to be Renamed ‘California Technology Agency’

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation this week that renames the state’s IT office, extends the agency’s functionality to 2015 and codifies the ongoing IT consolidation in the state’s executive branch.

In addition to the agency’s new name, its top leader — the state CIO — will have the new title of Secretary of California Technology, a change that state CIO Teri Takai said in early September will denote that the agency and its CIO are on equal footing with other state departments.

“This legislation tops a list of strategic changes made to California’s IT program to further improve the state’s IT operations,” Schwarzenegger said in a press release. “This action will strengthen project oversight, increase transparency in spending, promote greater cost savings and define specific targets to reduce energy usage in our IT systems and further consolidate systems.”

The measure also codifies Schwarzenegger’s February 2010 executive order to define targets and timelines for IT consolidation across the executive branch. It also creates a permanent structure for IT governance, as outlined in the Governor’s Reorganization Plan, which consolidated state IT functions under the Office of the State CIO (OCIO).

These changes essentially solidify the continuation of ongoing IT consolidation efforts Schwarzenegger started implementing in 2007, when he signed SB 90, which established the OCIO as a cabinet-level agency with statutory authority over IT policy.

Schwarzenegger, who is term limited, is set to leave office in January, and Takai may be in line for a U.S. Department of Defense technology job.

The OCIO establishes and enforces IT strategic plans, policies, standards and enterprise architecture, as well as approves IT projects for all state departments. The Governor’s Reorganization Plan realigned the state’s IT resources, including the Department of Technology Services, under the leadership of the OCIO to enhance efficiency and bolster performance. This reorganization created more accountability and provided a framework to achieve a $1.5 billion cost savings over five years.

Originally called for in the executive order and included in the bill, California’s IT consolidation targets require state agencies to:

• reduce the total amount of energy used by IT and telecommunications equipment by 20 percent by July 2011 and by 30 percent by July 2012;
• reduce data center square footage by 50 percent by July 2011;
• host all mission-critical public-facing applications and server refreshes in a tier 3 data center and close all existing data centers and server rooms that house non-network equipment by June 2013;
• begin migrating from their existing network services to the California Government Network no later than July 2011;
• develop and maintain enterprise architecture plans in compliance with the statewide enterprise architecture policies and standards as established by the OCIO; and
• participate in activities coordinated by the Office of Information Security for response to security incidents and cyber-security threats.