Several CDCR and CCHCS employees were honored at the California Public Sector CIO Academy 2022.
The Public Sector CIO Academy fosters discussion on what it means to be a successful IT executive in the public sector. Also, the CIO Academy provides tools and strategies to assist current and emerging leaders.
This event is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for government and industry to collaborate and address the most important policy, management and leadership issues surrounding the future of digital government.
Public Sector CIO CDCR/CCHCS awardees include:
Tammy Cason, Business Information System Manager: As part of CDCR’s efforts to be more transparent with staff allegations and their dispositions, Cason led a top-priority IT project to understand the ever-changing business requirements, develop and test the functionality, and train and deploy a new system to hundreds of new users, all within six months. Her experience and drive, along with her and her team’s exhaustive dedication, brought this important project in on time and within budget.
Bruce Henry, SAP/Business Information System Infrastructure and Data Manager: Primarily driven by COVID-19 urgent needs, Henry led his team to stand up 21 new interfaces/data exchanges to bring various outside COVID-19 vendor test results into staff health records; push HR, vaccination, and test data to CDCR’s analytic and reporting groups; push test and vaccination data to the state’s systems; and pull vaccination data from the state’s system. Henry also led his team to significant and numerous SAP/BIS system upgrades of hardware and software during this same time. The team’s efforts have dramatically contributed to CDCR’s ability to operate and track COVID-related business processes, all while increasing the usability of the system.
Jon Wegsteen, Project Lead: To address security concerns, subpoena and auditing requests, multi-factor authentication, support issues, and meet the demand of the current business requirements, the LEADS (Law Enforcement Automated Data System) user interface was refactored using Progressive Web Application. This effort provided the first beta version in October 2021, with the intent of a full deployment for all users in March 2022. This work was the first significant change in LEADS since it was released on March 1, 1997. LEADS provides local law enforcement agencies with current information about parolees being supervised by CDCR.
Kevin Baroni, Middle Tier Project Lead: The EIS-Middle Tier is a CDCR-built and -supported API platform representing the backbone of the next generation of applications currently in development at CDCR. This new API platform can support all application development efforts and provide the lowest cost and fastest time to market for implementation of certain products that use existing departmental application data. The project leverages identity management, multifactor authentication, and is connected to monitoring, providing an audit trail. The project supports DevOps Services and agile project management and development automation processes.
Lak Ramakrishnan, Information Technology Manager I: Ramakrishnan led the effort to upgrade CDCR’s mission-critical legacy reporting sub-systems to improve security, availability, and performance, and provide modern analytics experience for about 11,000 users. This project involved a complete overhaul of hardware, networking and software components and was completed on time and within budget. The transition to the new system was seamless and did not cause any program interruption.
Rohit Chaurasia, IT Specialist III: The COVID-19 pandemic affected the prison system disproportionately, as the congregate setting puts the population and employees at greater risk of contracting and spreading the virus. COVID-19 vaccines have been a critical tool to reduce illnesses, prevent future outbreaks, and save lives. Chaurasia, a certified project manager, was selected to lead the project to vaccinate staff and incarcerated people because of his exemplary leadership skills and ability to manage complex, large-scale projects. He led CCHCS’ COVID-19 task force vaccination committee and created plans for receiving, distributing and administering vaccines at 35 adult prisons, five youth correctional facilities, and 13 reentry facilities.
Runora Francesconi, Information Technology Manager I, Electronic Health Record System (EHRS) Operations Manager: She led the implementation of the JAWS EHRS Digital Aide, allowing visually impaired users to complete workflows in EHRS without human assistance. The Digital Aide helps CCHCS maintain a qualified workforce and complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. She also led the implementation of Patient Letter, Cross Encounter Reconciliation, Psychiatry Summary and Suicide Rounding MPages. These solutions save time, reduce user error and the number of keystrokes needed to document care, and allow health care providers to focus more time on patient care.