Christian Farland was named CalPERS' chief information officer in February 2018. He manages the administration and direction of CalPERS' information technology (IT) services and strategy, and provides leadership and counsel to the board and executive team. Christian's duties include overseeing the 600-member information technology team, as well as the technology portfolio that makes up CalPERS' $100 million IT budget. He previously served in a number of leadership roles at CalPERS, including chief technology business officer; interim chief for the Technology & Strategic Services Division; chief of IT Performance and Accountability; and enterprise transition management project manager for CalPERS' transformation initiative for five years. Before joining CalPERS, he held positions as senior consultant as well as senior project manager at the Money Store in Sacramento.
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;23;25
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.
00;00;23;28 - 00;00;51;20
Davood Ghods
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the 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 the 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 Christian from Ireland joining us on the podcast.
00;00;51;23 - 00;01;27;05
Davood Ghods
Christian is currently the chief information officer at CalPERS. He manages the administration and direction of CalPERS is information Technology services and Strategy and provides leadership and counsel to the board and executive team. Christian's duties include overseeing the 600 member Information technology team, as well as the technology portfolio that makes up CalPERS $100 million I.T. budget. Christian That's pretty impressive.
00;01;27;07 - 00;01;50;25
Davood Ghods
Without going into too much of your background, I want to welcome you to our podcast and ask you to tell us a bit about your background. For someone who doesn't know about your experiences, can you give us a brief overview of what your career path has been and what you do now?
00;01;50;25 - 00;02;15;06
Christian Farland
Absolutely, Davood, and thanks for having me. It's, you know, it's it's wonderful to speak with you again and and, you know, share some of the things that we have going on at CalPERS. I started my my state career as a budget analyst with the Employment Development Department. And so I tend to come at business and I.T. with with maybe a financial lens that that isn't, you know, a pure technical approach.
00;02;15;08 - 00;02;38;22
Christian Farland
I've always looked at things from the how can we make this better, How can we make it more efficient and hopefully I've brought that forward in all of the different functions and jobs that I've had along the way. I was fortunate enough some people might remember Dennis Dearborn. He was my oh, my one of my early managers and he was the one who introduced me to it and brought me over into it.
00;02;38;24 - 00;03;07;26
Christian Farland
And I really remember him well. Yes, that's he introduced me to technology and said, you know, here, which project would you like to do to kind of dip your toes in? And I got into call centers. It was rolling out call centers at the time. And so for me, because of my budget background, I was able to figure out where all the different cost points were, what was driving cost, kind of what from a project perspective, kind of where those things were occurring.
00;03;07;28 - 00;03;40;22
Christian Farland
And so really got me into project management from there. Did leave state service for a little while, went to work at the money store, doing a lot of contact center and CRM type technologies over there, and then did a little bit of consulting after I left there and did some things on my own work for a couple of different companies, one in Southern California, one up here in Sacramento, but decided that I was on the road a lot and I really had missed the first year of my daughter's life.
00;03;40;25 - 00;04;06;07
Christian Farland
And so the opportunity came to go kind of back to my roots, back to public service. And I went to work at CalPERS answering phones on the Help desk, and I've had the fortunate opportunity to be a CalPERS now, oh 18, 19 years and seeing all kinds of different changes, but working my way through a variety of different places in it.
00;04;06;09 - 00;04;47;09
Christian Farland
Like I said, I started on the Help desk, went into desktop support, moved over into computer operations, production services and then moved back into project management and really have just had a tremendous opportunity to try a number of different things and get exposed to different parts of it. So, you know, this is sort of the culmination of all of that, all those experiences in bringing those together and being the CIO and helping to to lead an organization and and meet CalPERS mission of of providing retirement and health benefits to those who serve California excellence.
00;04;47;09 - 00;05;25;29
Christian Farland
Thank you, Christine. That's an impressive career path, and I wish you all the best. I knew you had a CTO vacancy. Have you filled out yet? We have not filled that. The final filing date for that was last week. Okay. I am you know, you know how the process goes. I'm going to be reviewing those applications in the next week or so, and I'm hoping to have interviews early in May and have that position filled by the first of the fiscal year, July one, no later than that's my request.
00;05;26;03 - 00;05;56;12
Davood Ghods
Good luck to you and your team. I also am honored and pleased that you mentioned Dennis's name. I had no idea that we will be going this direction, but I had the pleasure of working with Dennis also at the Consolidated Data Center when H. WDC and TIL data are consolidated. And I have fond memories of this and he was truly one of the leaders in I.T. in the state.
00;05;56;12 - 00;06;22;13
Davood Ghods
And I enjoyed working with him. Absolutely. I mean, I see him as one of the key people in my my career path. He's the one, like I said, who brought me into it and kind of set me on that direction. But he was also a mentor. And let's push the boundaries and finding ways to to do this more efficiently, more effectively, but also in a framework that makes sense. So I've always, always relied on on his guidance. Definitely miss him. Yeah, we lost him a few years ago. So since that day, since that time, a lot has happened in I.T.. So what emerging trends are you seeing in our field that we all should be paying more attention to that CalPERS is paying more attention to?
00;06;22;13 - 00;07;08;09
Christian Farland
Yeah, I don't know that they're necessarily emerging, but I think with with the last year and the COVID pandemic, certainly virtual working, virtually working remotely, all of the technologies that that go into that have really gotten pushed to the forefront now.
00;07;08;12 - 00;07;29;17
Christian Farland
And it really touches on a lot of different things. It's not just how I do my work or where I do my work in the connectivity. It's how do I do it securely. So the security side of that and making sure that no matter where my people are, I'm providing them a secure connection and at the same time, I'm securing all of my, you know, critical information.
00;07;29;17 - 00;08;15;24
Christian Farland
My four at CalPERS, we have a lot of personal and health information. And so, you know, being responsible for that is a big deal. The other thing I'm seeing is just the the need for now. We've always been sort of our disaster recovery and backup has been we're on site, we save it somewhere else and we restore it back on site with us being a lot more remote and certainly with people, everything moving to the cloud like it is that resiliency or disaster recovery is less about the recovery than it is about distributed technology and sort of being able to flip over from one thing to the other.
00;08;15;27 - 00;08;34;03
Christian Farland
And so one of the things that we've done in that area, we were fortunate timing was was good. We had moved our contact center from an on prem solution, but a year before the pandemic. So when it came time to flip the switch and move everybody out of the building, that was relatively seamless other than getting them equipment to take home. So that's an example of it.
00;08;34;03 - 00;08;59;04
Davood Ghods
That's great. That's a great lead in to my next question, which is I think you would agree that adjusting to the pandemic was challenging for many organizations, and now everyone is everyone is thinking of what the next major disruption like the pandemic is going to be and how can we better be prepared for it.
00;08;59;06 - 00;09;24;08
Davood Ghods
So resiliency is a big topic of conversation these days. And many in the industry, including direct technology, are offering services like resilience as a service. What are some examples of resilience you've seen in your business in the past 12 to 14 months? And what is the one thing that you're doing to improve resilience?
00;09;24;10 - 00;10;09;20
Christian Farland
So it's interesting. I look at resilience as particularly as it relates to the pandemic in two parts. One from a technology and business perspective, the other from my personal perspective of people technology wise. I gave the example of us moving our contact center to a cloud based system. But the other thing we've also done is moved or changed the way we've done our network topology, leveraging services like Equinix and being much more diverse in getting things out to the cloud and access to the cloud much, much easier without having to to rely on a particular path here, at a particular path there.
00;10;09;23 - 00;10;48;06
Christian Farland
That's given us the ability to be much more flexible in both providing access to our our products and services, but also getting folks, our internal folks, access to those things to manage and maintain them. And we have them distributed in diverse sites. Seattle and San Francisco excuse me, San Jose. So that's one piece of it. The other piece of it is from a resilience perspective, not, you know, so much of our business and I'm sure most most of the folks within particularly within the state of California, a lot of our stuff was, if not paper based, it was manual based.
00;10;48;06 - 00;11;15;22
Christian Farland
I might have an electronic document, but I'm moving that from place to place and having to do that manually. One of the things that we have really been trying to push is taking those processes that certainly the ones that are easily moved to a more automated solution to do that and taking a really hard look at a lot of our processes and leaning them out so that we can be much more flexible and responsive if and when we have to to shift them.
00;11;15;22 - 00;12;04;05
Christian Farland
We've gone to electronic signature in a lot of different cases, manual routing, auto routing, those kinds of things based on workflows. And it just it takes the kind of mundane people portion out of it and allows people to do the actual the the analytical work that is really value add, right from a just a people perspective. It's been it's been wonderful to watch the resilience of, you know, not just the CalPERS team members serving our members, but particularly, you know, my vision is into insight and seeing the the way that people have been able to dive into coming up with innovative solutions or from a management perspective, you know, being willing to try and fail
00;12;04;05 - 00;12;32;14
Christian Farland
quickly on things. You know, we know early on in the pandemic we were trying a bunch of different technologies, you know, Chromebooks for there's something else for that. And there was a real sense of of let's just try this. And if we fail, we'll move on to the next thing and to to see that kind of of kind of teamwork and people willing to kind of throw themselves to try to help everybody else in the organization, knowing that our end mission is providing those benefits.
00;12;32;16 - 00;13;04;22
Christian Farland
It's been wonderful to watch, and I think it's given people a real sense of accomplishment. As tired as we get. You know, after a year of this, I'm still looking at my team and seeing them, you know, with their chin up, being proud of the things that they've done. So that's fantastic.
00;13;04;24 - 00;13;40;18
Davood Ghods
As a member of my CalPERS, I'm happy that you are at the helm for responsible for the infrastructure and the systems at CalPERS. And I we ask this question because really there needs to be awareness at all organizations what if we run into another Black swan event that no one expected? How resilient are we and how quickly can we get back up? So I'm glad to hear that CalPERS is well prepared. Christian Direct Technology. When we take on a project, we always talk about how we are going to get that project done just like anyone else.
00;13;40;20 - 00;14;04;05
Davood Ghods
But we also asked why we are doing what we are doing. We even have a departmental. Why? What is your why? What motivates you in your work? I think there's two pieces of that. You know, I mentioned early on in my career that one of the things that does drive me is how can we do things more efficiently?
00;14;04;12 - 00;14;41;07
Christian Farland
And so there's always that part of it's like, how can we make a better mousetrap? And I see that in in, in the teams around me always looking to to do things better. But for for most of us, I think for all of us, a CalPERS, one of the important things is our mission. I keep going back to that, but when you think about public service and you think about, you know, serving the people of California and serving the people who serve the people of California, that's a pretty strong mission to get behind.
00;14;41;07 - 00;15;17;13
Christian Farland
And knowing that you're providing the, you know, financial security, the health security, you know, in our case for, you know, approximately 2 million folks. You feel that responsibility, but you also feel the the pride in being able to do that. So how can I make that better? How can I how can I touch somebody's lives and periodically, you know, our our communications team will put out a video or a an exposé on, you know, here's here's how we have touched people's lives in the state of California.
00;15;17;18 - 00;15;41;15
Christian Farland
Here's how we've touched, you know, somebody's retirement. To hear those kinds of stories, particularly back from our contact center or through our board meetings, it it makes you think, you know, even though I'm just plugging in this particular cable into the back of this server, I contributed to that. And that's we really try to tie everything we do back to our mission into our strategic plan.
00;15;41;18 - 00;16;07;24
Christian Farland
Excellent. It's really a chance to make a difference when you work in public sector and you guys do that. And we would we would be happy to partner with any departments to help achieve that goal. And what a great motivator to make someone's life better. I was really excited. You know, we do a CalPERS, we do an annual engagement survey with all of our our team members.
00;16;07;24 - 00;16;37;10
Christian Farland
And one of the questions is about how well does the organization tie you and your work to the mission? And what was really redeeming for me and emerging for me was within it alone, we were 90 plus percent of the folks said, I see a direct tie of my work to to the CalPERS mission. So if you can do that, then then everything else gets easier.
00;16;37;12 - 00;17;05;18
Davood Ghods
Exactly. I agree. Next question is about inspiration and innovation. And I know you guys are very innovative, CalPERS. So what inspires innovation on your team or at CalPERS?
00;17;05;19 - 00;17;32;01
Christian Farland
I think anytime there's recognition of of the ideas that are brought forward and people can see those things come to fruition, we have a number of different paths that people can bring ideas forward. We have what's called the Idea Factory, which is enterprise wide, where more people submit their ideas for improvement and it goes through a governance process of the senior leaders and prioritized and particularly, you know, once those things get implemented, we do whatever we can to communicate that this is where that came from. Your ideas are important. Here's how they came to fruition.
00;17;32;04 - 00;17;59;09
Christian Farland
And so to see those things actually flourish gives people that encouragement to keep submitting those good ideas. You know, I consider my chair as the CIO and have all kinds of grand ideas. But the wonderful thing about these kinds of programs is that the people that are specifically in in the work that they're touching, that work every day, they see where the problems are.
00;17;59;09 - 00;18;43;13
Christian Farland
They know it's they know how to fix it far better than I do. I can just help facilitate getting those things improved. So that's one way. The other one the other thing we try to do is really connect. We've done a lot of work with business relationship management within our i.t in our I.T organization and the rest of CalPERS and we have regular meetings with, you know, our leadership, their leadership, trying to understand where it is they need to go, what it is they need to accomplish, what are the metrics they're trying to hit, what are the key drivers and risks and really working with them on strategies on how to get there and again,
00;18;43;13 - 00;19;11;13
Christian Farland
that that partnership of of constant improvement and working together I think really drives innovation that I had not seen in the past.
00;19;11;15 - 00;19;34;00
Davood Ghods
Innovation is not always about the latest technology, it's about collaboration, it's about partnership. It's about the human side of tech. Exactly. It's about listening to each other that yeah, so one of our models that direct technology is the humans inside of tech. And the next couple of questions, my last two questions are about that. So we want to learn more about you. What is something that would surprise people about your background, their interests? I don't know. I don't know if anything I about me surprises people. Are you into winemaking? You like travel?
00;19;34;07 - 00;19;57;29
Christian Farland
I love travels. I have a number of different hobbies. I'm. I'm an avid cyclist. Mm. I, in fact, I'm right now training for a ride by my 55th birthday this summer. I want to ride from Sacramento to San Francisco. Wow. Have the have the route mapped out. I've got some some folks that are training with me and going to help me get there. So that that's one of the things.
00;19;58;01 - 00;20;24;02
Christian Farland
I'm also an avid golfer, so the problem I have is that both of those things take time and so they compete with each other. I've been playing a lot of golf during COVID. Unfortunately, my my skills and score have not shown, you know, that dedication of time. But I still get out and it's nice to be outside and spaced and know, walk around, travel.
00;20;24;04 - 00;20;50;09
Christian Farland
So it's funny, you're asking about my my career. I start I went to college and I was a history major. I love history. I love historical fiction. I love visiting historical places and travel. That's just kind of a thing I like to do. My my original intent was to be an attorney. Mm hmm. But clearly, you know, changed that trajectory.
00;20;50;11 - 00;21;16;05
Christian Farland
And so greeting and I like I like to read about places and then go visit them or visit them and go read them. And it to me that really kind of brings both both pieces to life, both the specific history, but also for the, you know, fictional history. And you can imagine things around there. Good, Good luck to you on your bike ride from Sacramento Sources School.
00;21;16;07 - 00;21;50;26
Christian Farland
Thank you. What's the farthest you've done? The longest I've gone in a given day is just over a hundred miles. I've done several centuries. And there's a group of folks that I've done a trip down the coast with a couple of times. Some people might know Devin Holmes from CDCR. Yeah. He organizes a trip called the PAC West Tour that I've joined in on a couple of times, and that that's a multi-day trip that goes from essentially the Santa Cruz area all the way down to just south of Santa Barbara.
00;21;50;28 - 00;22;13;18
Davood Ghods
Very balanced. That one's fun. Yeah, I know Devin very well. I worked with him at sea this year. Mm hmm. And I'm not surprised that you're an avid golfer since, you know, Dennis. And Dennis is also the one who got me into golf. Very good, Christian. Where can people find you and keep tabs on what you're working on? How can people support your work?
00;22;13;19 - 00;22;49;18
Christian Farland
Sure. So, you know, a lot of the things that we do, we try to be as transparent as possible. And so quarterly, our project updates and things like that are posted as are reported as part of our board reports. So, you know, that's kind of the easiest and quickest way. There's also, you know, we do semiannual reports of, you know, here's the purchases that we're doing, here's the potential contracts that we're going out for.
00;22;49;18 - 00;23;15;05
Christian Farland
So those are the kinds of things and a kind of very high level that are just easily accessible. But we've been setting up what we've been trying to do is do regular quarterly business reviews with a lot of our partners and, you know, just kind of setting aside time for for new ideas to come in. I've always struggled with, you know, managing the time of of people cold calling.
00;23;15;08 - 00;23;52;28
Christian Farland
And so anybody has any suggestions on how to kind of set those up. We've we've flirted with the idea of, you know, one Friday morning, a month, 30 minutes locked up. I'm always open for those kinds of of of suggestions for doing that. But you know phone call I'm always available should mean out on LinkedIn. Very good. You know most people answer this question by LinkedIn but the I appreciate you offering several channels and I'm sure we'll be taking advantage of that.
00;23;53;01 - 00;24;20;20
Davood Ghods
Thank you so much for joining us today, Christian. Thank you, listeners out there for joining us as well. We will see you all in the next episode of the Davood for Thought podcast, where we will shed more light on the human side of tech.