Navigating 30 Years in State IT with Andrew Armani

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Narrator

We're in an era of rapid change where resilience is vital. The Davood for Thought podcast dives into the most important topics in government and technology today. Our host, Davood Ghods, sits down with his vast network of colleagues to dish on the tech challenges that affect us all. Follow this podcast on your favorite platform and join the conversation by sharing it on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

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Davood Ghods

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Direct Technologies, the Food for Thought podcast. I'm Davood Ghods and I will be your host today. The way I stay up with the pressing topics of tech and government of today is to tap into the panel of experts I've had the honor of connecting with over the years. Today we have Andrew Armani joining us on the podcast.

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Davood Ghods

Andrew is currently the CEO of Answer Tech, an IT consulting firm. He co-founded, but he has worked for the state of California for the past 20 years, where he has been involved in every aspect of the state I.T. business, such as budgeting, dealing with the legislators, working with all levels of executive branch, including the governor's office and other constitutional offices. Andrew, I want to congratulate you on being inducted into the California Public Sector Hall of Fame at the CIO Academy recently, and welcome you to this podcast. Welcome.

00;01;22;00 - 00;02;07;15

Andrew Armani

Thank you, Davood. Thank you very much. It was definitely an honor and a great surprise to be part of that or be a member of that club now. Yeah, great. Well, we appreciate your tempting our invitation and before I ask my first question, I also wanted to congratulate you for a very happy New Year.

00;02;07;16 - 00;02;37;24

Davood Ghods

Yes. No, absolutely Happy New Year to you. And I was actually very pleased to see a direct technology having that table. Yes, I have seen. So I'm sure you had probably a lot to do with it. So that was great. Good job. I mentioned that only on our marketing team was awesome and has been following it every year in the last few years. Again, thank you for being with us today. And why don't you tell us, please, a little bit about your background and for someone who doesn't know about your area of expertise, can you give us a brief overview of what you've been doing, please?

00;02;37;26 - 00;03;23;14

Andrew Armani

I'm sure you've kind of alluded to some of my background. I actually have been working or I work for the state of California for over 30 years and and before that I started my career in Silicon Valley, in software engineering, and then I moved to hardware engineering in the after, I think it was about four or five years.

00;03;23;14 - 00;04;18;24

Andrew Armani

I joined the state in 1990, I believe it was, and I continued on the technical path for about seven or eight years and then about 20 years ago I actually I was moving to or I joined the executive side of the information technology. During those years, I was also the services director for State of California, where I brought the consistent look and feel for all the websites, for all the departments, and also helped to bring the back office applications or software again, consistently, 1 to 2, the entire executive branch.

00;04;18;27 - 00;04;50;16

Andrew Armani

Since I'm retired, I, as you mentioned, of course co-founded and started a company called the Astrotech Consulting. And we are continuing our health with the state of California and other public sector and locals and counties and city. So that's kind of briefly what I've been doing. I don't want to go too long. I know it will take the whole day if you did.

00;04;50;18 - 00;05;16;14

Andrew Armani

But, you know, I remember when you were leading the E-services effort and that was the first enterprise wide, state wide effort that the state took for a common look and feel of, or at least that was one of the end results of it. It was a common look and feel, and a lot of departments still have that on their websites.

00;05;16;16 - 00;05;42;24

Andrew Armani

Yes. Yes. And then one last thing on that one was that this is a kind of not well known effort that I did and my team, and that was creating a database for those who retire and would like to come back as a target. And it's called a boomerang. That's Yeah, that's right. I remember the boomerang. Yep. It's still around.

00;05;42;24 - 00;06;07;24

Andrew Armani

And again, the department can register and put their needs out there and those and retirees can go and look to see if there are skills that matches their skills and they can apply for it. So it's made it a lot easier for retirees to apply. And I think it's a win for our state of California because they don't have to try to find the experts that are retired.

00;06;07;24 - 00;06;32;03

Davood Ghods

And, you know, probably there's been one of them. There are a lot of a lot of experts out there that we can use The state of California. Thank you. Yeah, I believe at that time Boomerang dot Seattle Gov was the site. I don't know if it's still listed. Yes it's it's alive and kicking. Absolutely. It is managed by the Department of Technology. And I believe Tele Cha still maintains some of the databases. I see. Excellent. What emerging trends are you seeing in your field that we should all be paying more attention to?

00;06;32;03 - 00;07;14;10

Andrew Armani

Well, I think you've heard this before from me because this is really my passion. And I preach at MIT where I can there are and again, these are not rocket science, but what I see is and what really I think is state and public sector really, really needs and they should focus on is artificial intelligence, machine learning and of course, blockchain.

00;07;14;12 - 00;07;42;17

Andrew Armani

And as I talked to CIOs around the state, it seems like some of the departments have already started, I think partly on the artificial intelligence kind and especially things like chatterbox. And they are exploring, I mean, at the very beginning of looking at blockchain, but I think those two or three areas are the ones that are up and coming.

00;07;42;17 - 00;08;09;17

Andrew Armani

I know private sector has a lot more into them, but I think public sector needs to go to them because as you all know, we are not able to or I should say state and public sector is not they are not able to attract a lot of experts in. So by way of automation, we can serve people of California, I think, much better.

00;08;09;20 - 00;08;53;29

Davood Ghods

Absolutely. I absolutely agree with you. We have done some work in all of these areas, artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain with our various clients either in public or private sector. We work with utility companies and industry, and there are examples of the kind of work that the technology is doing in these areas. Moving on to the next question, I think you would agree that adjusting to the pandemic was challenging for many organizations and how and now everyone is thinking of what the next major disruption similar to the pandemic is going to be.

00;08;54;04 - 00;09;24;24

Davood Ghods

And more importantly, how can we be better prepared for it? What are some examples of resilience that you have seen in your experiences in the past year? And what is the one thing that you think you are doing or organizations must do to improve resilience?  

00;09;24;27 - 00;09;55;05

Andrew Armani

Well, I mean, there are a lot of different things, obviously, but there are a couple of things that comes to my mind that I've seen that we weren't prepared for. One obviously is having when there are there are disasters, there are issues such as the pandemic that we are still going through. I think that departments, at least some of the states say they weren't ready to have the staff to help work. And again, this issue has been addressed and resolved by private sector, but for state and you've been there, as you know, we've tried for a long time.

00;09;55;05 - 00;10;27;04

Andrew Armani

We've been trying for a long time to have states provide more flexibility to the staff to do tell kind of work and telecommute. And I think that was one of the big hurdles that I see that with. I mean, State finally jumped over, but it took it took a while and the people by surprise and as part of that, I think disaster recovery obviously at all level.

00;10;27;06 - 00;11;00;03

Andrew Armani

I think it is really important because one of the things that I noticed again from my previous office was that even though I tried hard to have all the files, all the documents online so everybody can access them from various places, it was very tough to get, for example, the security part of it handled and the fact that people were used to getting things online.

00;11;00;03 - 00;11;35;05

Andrew Armani

It took a while. So I think that to me is part of disaster recovery, having that plan and that was missing. So I think that is something that I still think we have a while to go and public sector anyway. Yeah. And so that was one thing. And the other thing that I saw was that going back to the cybersecurity and issues that teleworking, telecommuting brought to the surface was that we weren't prepared for a hardening the environment from all from all levels. And that's that's something that I think they've tried to address. But I think they still need a better job. Do a better job at it.

00;11;35;05 - 00;12;11;06

Davood Ghods

Right. Right. Thank you. Yeah, definitely. I agree with you that being prepared for and you remember where we had to go and research and create presentations on why Boyardee was a for another word and that we couldn't implement it because of security risks.

00;12;11;09 - 00;12;52;22

Davood Ghods

And look what the pandemic, the two that for another word anyway. Exactly. Yeah. And definitely you know for resilience you must have a disaster recovery plan, a business continuity plan. We do consulting around those cybersecurity hardening very important and we have a resilience as a service offering at direct technology today. That's very a direct technology. We always talk about how we are going to get a project done, but we also ask why we are doing what we are doing. What is your why? Why that? I mean, what motivates you in your work?

00;12;52;24 - 00;13;33;13

Andrew Armani

Well, really, the number one motivation for me, at least while I was working for a state, was to ensure that people of California get the right service and get it. You know, in a timely fashion and manner. Because as I've always talk about this in different venues, is that state of California or public sector in general?

00;13;33;15 - 00;14;07;28

Andrew Armani

This is not an entertainment kind of a how do I put it? We are not we are not Facebook or Twitter or what have you, where people want to come in and enjoy their time online. Right. We are there to provide. Let's say you want to renew your driver's license. All the person wants us to come in, have it easy access to the website, an easy way of renewing their license or get or, you know, pay their tickets or what have you.

00;14;08;00 - 00;14;34;12

Andrew Armani

And just leave so that what they need, I mean, the state needs to do is to make a simple website, make it easy to access with one or two click to get to where you want to go and for them to again do what they need to do and get out. And I think we still have or I should say state still has issues with that kind of a philosophy.

00;14;34;14 - 00;14;58;28

Andrew Armani

I go to various websites for different things. That's just a check to see what's going on. And I still see that you have to go around looking for different web pages to get to where you want to go. And remember, not everybody is necessarily computer savvy, especially the, you know, the senior citizens, the older generation, the baby boomers.

00;14;59;01 - 00;15;27;05

Andrew Armani

And that is something that I think it is still lacking. It's getting better. But to me, it's we are here. We are here as public servants. So we need to make it easier for people to get the government services and they can go about their business. And that's that's been my passion. And my wife know what a great motivator to ensure that the people of California get timely service.

00;15;27;08 - 00;15;55;29

Davood Ghods

And you know, you did it while you were working for the state and now you're doing it as part of the answer tech. And I'm doing it by helping state agencies, public sector entities from a partnership with private sector. And we would be happy to partner with any public sector entity who needs help in these areas. A couple of words that I'm going to throw at you, Andrew. Inspiration and innovation. And some of them may be overused, but what inspires innovation on your team?

00;15;56;02 - 00;16;24;16

Andrew Armani

So this is a very good question. And I tell you, I can go just on this question for hours, and it's been something that I've been trying to do for many years, and I have teams that report it to me. So I think it teams are inspired.

00;16;24;19 - 00;16;55;02

Andrew Armani

I mean, and that inspires teams that are inspired by their leadership and their leadership style. So there are three things that I can think that. Like I said, I've always followed and put in place to me, number one, transparency and openness is something that you have to have in your team. Second, I think freedom of expression and experiment.

00;16;55;04 - 00;17;27;05

Andrew Armani

And then third is basically celebrating diversity, inclusion and out-of-the-box thinking. I think those are at least three different things that goes into this formula to make the team to be inspired. If you as a leader don't allow that kind of, again, transparency and openness, I don't think any any kind of inspiration is going to happen. So that's kind of in a nutshell.

00;17;27;12 - 00;17;58;05

Andrew Armani

Again, I can go for hours on this, but those are the main things that I can think of right now. No, absolutely. Those are if if any one or two of those is present in any team that they can be inspired to innovate because they can speak freely, that there's transparency and openness. And, you know, you're the second person that we've been talking with, talking about diversity and out of the box, thinking.

00;17;58;07 - 00;18;23;12

Davood Ghods

So excellent. Thank you. What is something that would surprise people about your background or interests? I've known you for many years and I'm hoping that I will hear something new today. But you tell us what is something that people would find surprising about your background, their interest?  

00;18;23;12 - 00;19;12;17

Andrew Armani

Well, I think you know all my interests. I don't think you'll be surprised. But I've dabbled in different things. Actually, I. I was when I was very young, I joined the Air Force Academy, so I went to flight school. And so that was fun. Then I picked up a winemaking hobby, and I actually took some courses on Enology and Viticulture at UC Davis. And at the end I of passed two or three years while I was still doing that, I won awards from from the Sacramento What do you call that?

00;19;12;20 - 00;19;43;20

Andrew Armani

Yeah yeah. College state fair. On on home winemaking and yeah that was kind of I got silver and gold and brown and bronze and different Yeah. Wines that I made. And then of course I got into drone hobby when drone weren't even the way we know them now available. So we used to build them from scratch. And you remember you're part of the team.

00;19;43;25 - 00;20;09;08

Andrew Armani

Yep. And that was great experience. I think about ten years ago or so when again, the videos and stuff that you see on drones are still available. We used to put cameras on our remote control planes and actually, you know, have a TV display. If you remember, I, I would bring a TV in the back of the truck and plug it in and you see that.

00;20;09;08 - 00;20;40;08

Andrew Armani

So, I mean, a lot of things that nobody was really thinking about when we were doing it. And interestingly, at one time when one of the guys, two of us went into a remote area to do some testing, I remember we were done with our flight and then we got in the car and then his car, the battery died on his car and we are in the middle of nowhere.

00;20;40;11 - 00;21;09;10

Andrew Armani

There's nobody to recall. So I figured that we had this 12 volt battery for three or four RC planes. And I told my friend, I said, Let's go in and try to see if we can boost, you know, the battery with this RC controlled battery. And it started the car. And then at that point we were thinking that maybe we should maybe we should put this in a package and market it.

00;21;09;10 - 00;21;29;01

Andrew Armani

I'm not kidding. And now they call these the power units or whatever they call them, they have them out. I mean, we thought, yeah, power, but we thought about it years ago, but we didn't follow up, of course. Right. So those are kind of Yeah, those are some of the stuff that I've done in the past. Very good.

00;21;29;03 - 00;22;13;04

Andrew Armani

Yeah, definitely. We had that group called the CIO Flying Group, and you, me and a few other CEOs would get together at Folsom Lake and fly or or see or or see planes or drones in the recent past. We should pick that up again. Yeah. And I'm sure our vice president of Government Solutions, Kyle Keyser, is going to be talking to you about one winemaking is our wine connoisseur and direct technology and is very much interested in learning more about people who make wines or have vineyards.

00;22;13;06 - 00;22;59;25

Davood Ghods

That's great. My last question, Andrew, is where can people find you and keep tabs on what you're working on? Can people how can people support your work?  

00;22;59;25 - 00;23;31;09

Andrew Armani

Sure. We have a website. It's called Answer Dexcom. And on that website, of course, you can always email us or call us. I'm very involved, much involved with Say So and I do still mentoring the state of staff, various employees and I am really putting together a committee to do more of mentorship. And that is something that maybe we can discuss that in other podcasts. And so that the easiest way, again to reach us is by the website, and we'll be more than happy to talk to anybody that calls or email us.  

00;23;31;12 - 00;24;11;09

Davood Ghods

Excellent. Excellent. You know, for the listeners, I want to go back to our model of direct technology. We are the human side of tech. I'm glad Andrew talked about his story in answering some of the questions and about what he does as a technologist. What what are some of his interests? So thank you again, Andrew, for joining us today. And thank you listeners out there for learning us as well. We will see you all in the next episode of The Food for Thought, where we will shed more light on the human side of tech.

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