Championing IT Innovation and Security with Chris Cruz

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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 Davood 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 Chris Cruz joining us on the podcast.

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Davood Ghods

Chris is currently the director and chief information officer for the San Joaquin County. He's a progressive, dynamic and visionary leader with over 18 years of experience as an executive in I.T. leadership positions and 29 years of overall ITN business experience. With a primary focus in the government sector managing half billion dollar organizations. Without going into too much of you other background, Chris. Mainly because I'm going to be asking about you. I want to welcome you to our podcast. Welcome.

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Chris Cruz

Thank you, Davood. I really appreciate it and thanks for the invite. I look forward to sharing how many of them in life will discussion with you and the audience about people process and enabling good technology. Throughout my career, but really diving into the background of it.

00;01;41;04 - 00;02;12;01

Chris Cruz

I think I have almost 30 years of government experience. I'm actually announced my retirement here at the end, effective at the end of April of this year. Congratulations. Thank you. So it's a big milestone when you spend 30 years in government. And I started the Department of Justice in 1989 and then worked my way up to the Department of Health Services, crossed over into information technology in 1996, managing the Women, Infants and Children's Legacy Modernization System.

00;02;12;03 - 00;02;47;23

Chris Cruz

So that was kind of my truck and transitioned over into information technology. I then became an is manager at Department of Health Services, and then lo and behold, and you hired me over food and agriculture. And that was my first track into being a CIO for food and agriculture in 2007. So having that ability to transition into a CIO position and later an agency information officer position, I think helped give me a lot of perspective on an enterprise level about state policies, trends and technology capabilities that need to be effectuated effectively.

00;02;47;26 - 00;03;16;11

Chris Cruz

So having that experience with our CIO, Terry Takai, and helping develop enterprise solutions like Office 365 and being able to work with folks like yourself and Andrew Armani, I think really helped elevate my technology presence in government in 2011 or to the end of 2010. I was appointed as a CIO at Department of Health Care Services, spent almost five years in that particular position managing the state's largest Medicaid program called Medi-Cal.

00;03;16;14 - 00;03;52;24

Chris Cruz

And from that position on in 2015, I was appointed as chief deputy director of operations of the California Department of Technology by then CIO Carlos Ramos. I served four years in that position in managing the state data center and being the deputy state CIO on managing all aspects of policy procurement. After four years at the state, I my last couple of years have been spent as director and chief information officer in San Joaquin County again driving innovation transfer and change throughout the county, looking at a common security posture across the county and common infrastructure.

00;03;52;26 - 00;04;26;21

Davood Ghods

Excellent. Thank you. That's very impressive. I remember fondly our working together at Department of Food and Agriculture and working on IT governance and I knew then that you are a hard and smart worker and you'll be going for and you have proven that to be true. Congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate that. The next question is, can you tell us about what emerging trends are you seeing in this field?

00;04;26;27 - 00;04;56;12

Chris Cruz

We are in that we should be paying more attention to these days. Well, I think that's a great question, Davood. I think one of the common emerging trends now, I think if you ask what keeps most CEOs at night, it's cybersecurity and all of the cyber threats that we have going on. One of the first orders of magnitude when I left Department of Technology, we put a security operation center, and before I left the start of implementing some centralized security components to address a common security posture.

00;04;56;14 - 00;05;19;06

Chris Cruz

So I brought that model to San Joaquin County. So we did a security assessment. We have a three year cyber strategy that's on how to say gumball that folks can look at to really address common security practices across the county. And so we've done a great job using tools like CrowdStrike and Tanium and Palo Alto Network Solutions and Cisco Stock, Wash.

00;05;19;09 - 00;05;49;27

Chris Cruz

We have a combination of those tools now, and we're defining what I call a single pane of glass moving for. So that's been some real extraordinary challenges that we've executed successfully on, and that obviously has been our number one issue. The other areas to address emerging technologies is basically an open data and data governance and transparency, bringing open data what I call in transparency to the citizen and making sure that you're publishing all of your data online and have the ability to look through budget and other aspects.

00;05;49;28 - 00;06;17;20

Chris Cruz

So again, you'll see in San Joaquin County that a lot of our data is public information because in the county you're really sitting at the residents experience board meetings or with resident, you know, you're definitely within the action of what I call consequences of delivering good services to government. So those are two things that come to mind. Cloud computing still continues to be an emerging threat as we still drive all of our legacy modernization and all of our applications into the cloud.

00;06;17;22 - 00;06;46;12

Chris Cruz

And in San Joaquin County, we recently moved the county to a single county email system Office 365 So now everyone, all 7400 employees are on a single email system, and we standardize on the Microsoft teams and SharePoint platforms to drive business intelligence and analytical capabilities. So doubling down and making investments on enterprise tools has been a huge emerging threat for the county and very helpful in how we deliver our business applications.

00;06;46;14 - 00;07;17;14

Chris Cruz

The other area too, that I see that's real that we're really deep into is developing mobile applications and mobile device management across the county. We have a lot of agricultural workers and folks that work in the farming fields and go out and audit. So it's very important that we have mobile applications that can tie back into our core systems, whether that be our PeopleSoft financial systems or delivery systems for how we track and monitor, you know, food and agriculture components, all of that is in place and that's been a big priority for us.

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Chris Cruz

So those are the top things. Also, business, intelligence and analytics are very important. We use a lot of business intelligence and data analytics in our chat lot in as well as machine learning. We continue to evolve and mature our chat block capability is again, as we provide that resident experience and important, what I call citizen and customer engagement.

00;07;36;18 - 00;07;55;18

Chris Cruz

Those are key aspects to ensuring that emerging technology are going to be successful first and foremost. So I think driving those, but having a plan and structure obviously in place is we have a digital information strategy now that's effectuate it for the next three years. It really calls out all those emerging technologies and how we're going to lay those out.

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Chris Cruz

But last but not least, I didn't want to mention the apprenticeship program that we've developed and paying attention to effective recruitment and retention of the workforce with these emerging technologies. We can't do it without the people in process, and that's very important. So we wanted to make sure that we're bringing some diversification also to our workforce and giving people the opportunity because we need these technology positions and we need these people to stay within government in order for us to be successful.

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Davood Ghods

Right. All right. Thank you. That's a very comprehensive list of emerging trends. I definitely agree with you on cybersecurity. And I'm glad and happy to see that there is more attention from the upper executive leadership throughout all levels of government, be more attention being given to cybersecurity, more funding available.  

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Chris Cruz

Unfortunately, it's because we have gotten hit with various attacks, but I'm glad to see that we are we are doing more in that area now for sure. And yeah, absolutely do that. And I think as government employees and executives, we need to be proactive rather than reactive. And I think some of the biggest opportunities we've had is to educate our employees, but also educate our executives at the county supervisor level, at the director level, at the agency level, at the governor's office level of how important cybersecurity is.

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Chris Cruz

And this this really is our new World War three. This is a cyber war that we all need to be prepared and manned appropriately to defend, that these particular acts, because they're coming at such a high frequency now, you must have the necessary security tools in place in order to mitigate and ward those types of threats off.

00;09;55;23 - 00;10;20;28

Davood Ghods

Exactly, Chris, I think you would agree that adjusting to the pandemic was challenging for many organizations, and now everyone is thinking of what the next major disruption is going to be. And more importantly, how can we better be prepared for it? So resiliency is a big topic of conversation these days. Also, what are some example tools of resilience you have seen in your organization in the past year? And what is the one thing you are doing to improve resilience?  

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Chris Cruz

Obviously, the pandemic is first and foremost was a huge challenge for all of us. As the pandemic hit almost a year ago in March of 2020. And one of the areas that we were preparing for at the time as I was trying to bring San Joaquin County to a virtual environment, virtual infrastructure environment, and also looking as telework as an opportunity to attract and retain and recruit people into San Joaquin County. And so I always say never let a good crisis go on and on.

00;10;42;15 - 00;11;06;01

Chris Cruz

So when the pandemic hit, we had to move essentially five, 6000 workers out to home. So we started planning to really utilize and repurpose our environment. We made sure that we had virtual private networks in place for 5000 plus folks. So they had protection at the end point and really went off on a we're doing a full time telework strategy and now we're in this virtual work environment.

00;11;06;03 - 00;11;33;07

Chris Cruz

But I think having the planning in place to plan for pandemics, to plan for natural disasters or anything of that nature is first and foremost. Now with technology, we've got to be nimble, we have to be agile and we have to be have some diversification across our network and ensure, again, the necessary security provisions are in place. So we took advantage of that pandemic to deploy and execute on all those areas that I just mentioned.

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Chris Cruz

And I think that was really important in today's networking County as a virtual environment where we have people working from home five days a week. We have some people in a hybrid mode that come to the office two days and are gone three days. But we have the necessary network, bandwidth and infrastructure now to accommodate a complete virtual environment.

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Davood Ghods

We do provide business continuity planning, consulting, direct technology and in relation to resilience as a service as well as cybersecurity consulting and direct technology, we always talk about how we are going to get a project or something done, but we also ask ourselves, why are we doing what we are doing? What is your why? In other words, what motivates you in your work?

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Chris Cruz

Well, I think I've always been in the 30 years I've been in government, I like to refer to myself as a passionate civil servant, and I want to give something back to the community. And I think in the positions I've had the opportunity to effectuate policy and technology change and drive innovation, that's been something that's really motivated me.

00;12;45;21 - 00;13;13;23

Chris Cruz

But I've also learned in my 30 years that you've got to bring people on this journey with you. You can't be an individual in a silo. You've got to, through partnerships and collaborative relationships, you've got to drive change. And that's been really important as part of anything I've ever been a part of, is getting people on board through good governance, through good project management, through good progressive discipline to be able to convince people that these are the right things to be able to do in getting projects done.

00;13;13;26 - 00;13;42;07

Chris Cruz

And and that's always motivated me. I've been a project manager by trade, and I think managing through a progressive discipline process and defining who does what by win has been a key to project success through the years, but also executive level governance is being able to make the necessary business case. Your directors or the Governor's office, CEO, Board of Supervisors, whoever is in the line of business of authority to make those transformational changes and convince them that that's the right direction that you need to move in.

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Chris Cruz

And I've been very fortunate in my career that I've been able to make really, really good, strong business case to support putting what I call pro progressive project management, the new framework around technology so we can manage it to success rather than to failure.

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

Davood Ghods

Right? You're absolutely correct. And I have seen these in the way you work, so I can attest to that. That's these are your principles. So I appreciate them as well. You know, innovation has been also a term and a keyboard that's been thrown around in the recent past and even today. But my question, my next question is really more towards what inspires innovation on your team. How do you inspire your team?  

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Chris Cruz

I think, you know, one of the areas, Susan Samuel King County and within Department technology is sometimes I think you can empowerment, I call it social empowerment. I think setting expectations and then letting people go off and innovate and come up with great ideas. I always say no good ideas should come on down or be unfounded. And I think opening up a buyer and a culture of engagement and a culture of possibility is really important. And I work through the last few years of being able to do that and I think with that type of perspective that seeds innovation, that drives transformation, when people know that they can bring ideas to the table and they can be part of a strategy.

00;15;13;08 - 00;15;37;24

Chris Cruz

I mentioned earlier our digital services and innovation strategy that's also published in SJ Gomora really lays into the three years and that was of defining an information strategy for King County, and that was really a complement of all the department heads, 31 department heads in the county, plus all of my ISG information systems division staff chiming in to say, Here's the things we need to do to innovate and drive transformation.

00;15;37;25 - 00;16;02;26

Chris Cruz

So having a strategy and having a roadmap on how to get there from here is really a proactive process, and we're actively working that strategy and those performance metrics within the plan. That's our keys to success is driving that. And again, we're driving that through good progressive governments, good progressive discipline and project management. And we have gatekeepers for each one of our initiatives to ensure that we're driving those to success.

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Chris Cruz

And I think that's really been most important and driving that as people want to be part of transformation, people want to be part of innovation and having a cohesive common governance approach. And a roadmap to do that in the county has really, I think, accelerated our transformation with innovation. Progress. Excellent. Yeah, I guess it would be You are incorporating these things in your apprenticeship program as well, actually.

00;16;30;08 - 00;17;03;22

Chris Cruz

Absolutely. And again, the apprenticeship program has been a big part of that. And if you go and read what we've done with the apprenticeship program and I have a video I can send you as we sent three folks when I first got to San Joaquin County as the CIO, we selected three folks that were in nonwhite positions throughout the county that we thought would be good, represent represent representatives to San Jose, walking Delta College to the county, paid for their two year AA degree in computer science so we could retrain those folks into entry level technology positions.

00;17;03;24 - 00;17;26;02

Chris Cruz

And so I'm happy to report in the 1st of March they started working with ESD, and our hope is to move them into information systems on positions and that they will have a career path of folks that we could retrain from business positions into technology positions. So that's another program I'm very proud of and I think is an excellent example of innovation on the people of culture side. And there's diversification too, that we wanted to make sure that we have a diversified workforce in San Joaquin County. So, you know, bringing more women into technology opportunities and more folks of diversification and culture has been very important. So I'm very proud of that program.

00;17;26;02 - 00;17;51;11

Davood Ghods

We'll see you implementing appropriately. Yeah. Chris, what is something that would surprise people about your background or interests?

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Chris Cruz

I think that probably mean people may not know that I'm a consummate workout person. I work out six days a week and I walk 30 miles a week. So health and fitness has been a big part of my program. I feel that a healthy body is a good sign of a healthy mind and allows me to wake up each day with purpose and connection and a level of energy to take on and accomplish a lot of these initiatives.

00;18;14;20 - 00;18;49;06

Chris Cruz

And I think that has been very important to me because I think in life I've learned more from my adversity than I have from my success. Very good. You still play baseball? Yeah. Now my son plays freshman baseball at Blossom High School, so I'm a proud dad that watches him play almost on a daily basis. And I'm thankful that I have three more years with him at Folsom High School to watch sports and ensure that he gets a good high school education and goes on to college and that he models the way I think as a role model.

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Davood Ghods

You know, we owe that to our kids to ensure that we're paying it forward and making society better at the same time as well. Very good. Well, my last question is, Chris, where can people find you and keep tabs on what you're working on? And would you like to make any announcements about what you'll be doing after retirement?

00;19;09;18 - 00;19;41;21

Chris Cruz

Yeah, I think we're mainly will people can find me as I'm an active I think link dinner if you will. I put a lot of information on LinkedIn about my career in my county career. So again, I'm retiring on April 30th. I'm going to transition and back into the private sector. I've taken a job as CIO for Tanium, so my job will be really helping Tanium develop its core capabilities within the state, local and education areas of government now on a national level.

00;19;41;21 - 00;20;04;22

Chris Cruz

So I'm very excited about my new role. I'm after 30 years of government, I feel I've left everything on the table. I've accomplished a lot. I paid it forward. So I feel good about getting off that transitional component now and then starting my new career. Still helping government, but in a private sector way. And I think I can provide increased value to the state and other states.

00;20;04;23 - 00;20;28;14

Chris Cruz

And looking at a common security posture and a single pane of glass and fighting the cybersecurity warfare that we've found ourselves currently on. So I'm very excited about that role. So I'll be moving over to titanium at the end of April and, you know, look forward to working with business partners. And as there's a lot of opportunity for us to work together a partner and develop collaborative relationships moving forward, just like I did in government.

00;20;28;14 - 00;20;59;01

Davood Ghods

So I welcome the opportunity to work with everyone and partner as appropriate. Yeah, we look forward to working with you. Congratulations on your new role and we definitely will be in contact. So thank you, Davood, and I appreciate the opportunity to come on and do this podcast and talk about everything about government and what I call good government and how we need to work together to ensure that we're defining and modeling a way for the most important part of who we serve, which is our constituents.

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Davood Ghods

Very good. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you again Chris. Look forward to speaking with you again. Thank you. Thank you. All the listeners also out there for joining us as well. We will see you all in the next episode of Davood for Thought, where we will shed more light on the human side of tech.

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