Steve Monaghan is the CIO and Director of General Services Agencies for Nevada County in California. In addition to being the CIO, he is responsible for the county public library system, the county airport facility management office of emergency services, central services, and centralized purchasing to name a few. Tune in as Steve dives into daily operations at the county, business continuity, and being a change agent for county agencies at the CIO level. Don't miss his story of Nevada County's most recent severe weather incident that left many citizens without power for days, and how they were able to bounce back.
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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 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 Steve Monaghan on the podcast.
00;00;49;02 - 00;01;29;23
Davood Ghods
Steve is the director of Information and General Services Agency at Nevada County in California, a post he has held since April 1999. In addition to being the CIO, Steve has the responsibility for the county public library system, the County Airport Facility Management, Office of Emergency Services, Central Services and Centralized purchasing. Prior to his 23 years at Nevada County, Steve was a founding principal for nine years at an IT consulting firm in the Sacramento area.
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Davood Ghods
Steve has a bachelor's degree in computer science and a minor in business administration. He has received many awards and holds several industry certifications in I.T. Governance leadership and auditing. In 2016, he was awarded the CIO of the Year by the California CIO Academy, and in 2004, the Center for Digital Government presented Steve their top 25 doers dreamers and drivers of technology in Government award.
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Davood Ghods
Steve also won the Visionary Award for I.T. leadership by the California County Information Services Directors in 23, and most recently in June 2020. He became a cybersecurity program Advisory Board member for California State University, Chico. Steve, thank you so much for being on our podcast. With your extensive background in public and private sectors. We can't wait to learn more about you. Please tell us more about yourself. All of your responsibilities at Nevada County. And what are some of the things you are currently working on? Welcome.
00;02;35;28 - 00;03;10;01
Steve Monaghan
Thank you, Davood. Very happy to be here and talking to you today. So as an agency director, I have about nine business units. So between I.T., the purchasing supplies, purchasing and our facilities management group, we're pretty much involved in every major initiative that county takes part of.
00;03;10;02 - 00;03;39;27
Steve Monaghan
Because if you think about any department, whether it's the building department, the sheriff, the library, they all need it. They need facilities to deliver their services from and they buy stuff. So we're we're really intimately involved with all the major projects. So it kind of gives a really great perspective of seeing the big picture. You know, like at 60,000 foot level of what's going on in the organization.
00;03;39;28 - 00;04;08;25
Steve Monaghan
So that's what I really enjoy the most about my position and being able to really help the county and all the business units of the county departments and delivering their missions. So that's really what drives me. When I came to the county, you know, my wife and I, we had a couple of kids. We were in Sacramento, we ran the business and we didn't want to raise our kids in a urban environment.
00;04;08;26 - 00;04;32;22
Steve Monaghan
We were both from rural communities where we grew up in Northern California. And we selected Nevada County, the grass Valley, in the Valley City area as where we wanted to raise our kids. And we shot communities and Grass Valley in Valley City still came up on top. So we decided to move here and the job just kind of worked out.
00;04;32;22 - 00;05;03;26
Steve Monaghan
You know, I had no intention of going to work for the public sector. County government really had no experience or knew what counties did you know that they have 30 business departments and hundreds of services. We always say counties are dysfunctional by state law because you would never group a jail and an animal shelter and a library and a permitting and a finance department all under kind of one entity.
00;05;03;26 - 00;05;29;07
Steve Monaghan
But that's how counties are, you know, in the health department, all the health services. So what do you raise? We shot communities. I got the job at the county, and I thought working for a single entity would be so boring coming from kind of the consulting services background in the private sector where you're in a different business multiple times a day.
00;05;29;10 - 00;06;11;13
Steve Monaghan
But that's exactly what counties are. I mean, you're working on a different line of business with a different customer multiple times every day, and that's what's so exciting. So it's whether you're doing online customer service management with public works so people can report potholes and graffiti vegetation and downed signs, or you're working with tax collector on investment software, a bank transfer interaction with or you're working with the sheriff with mobile data and a patrol car and all the real time officer safety applications.
00;06;11;15 - 00;06;42;11
Steve Monaghan
So the variety is just amazing and that's what I really enjoy about my position. And then being able to do that not just with it, but with the other products that we deliver out of our agency is really exciting. Yeah, it is. To say that your role is unique would be an understatement, but it does give you a great perspective, a unique perspective on the organization since you wear so many hats there.
00;06;42;13 - 00;07;18;20
Steve Monaghan
Definitely, yeah. And there are some CIOs in local government in counties across the country right now that have different responsibilities in addition to I.t. So and solano county and san Joaquin county, they're also run the elections department. I was what i really am for that. But it is I've got peers that run 911 dispatch. There's multiple peers that have libraries because that kind of makes sense.
00;07;18;23 - 00;07;50;26
Davood Ghods
And I think what county executives look at at the CIO level is, you know, really a business leader who sees the big picture of the organization. So it makes sense to put other operations under that person's name, right? Right. Absolutely. So in all of these roles that you have and the experiences that you've had, Steve, what emerging trends are you seeing in the IT and business fields that we all should be paying more attention to?
00;07;50;28 - 00;08;31;19
Steve Monaghan
Yeah, that's it's it's I would say it's always changing, but it never changes, right? So, you know, it's like the flavor of the day is always changing. But I think the long term trend and what our role as CIO doesn't change. So I view my role as as partnering with the business units, engaging with them, helping them improve their operations, getting more productivity and efficiency from their staff, providing better services to our citizenry, our residents and our community.
00;08;31;21 - 00;09;13;13
Steve Monaghan
And that's all, you know, using technology tools. Technology is just the toolbox, you know, really working with them and that partnership and building the systems in the county, the organizational I call it organizational infrastructure, not technology infrastructure, but organizational infrastructure, where we as an organization can can evaluate technology, select technology, invest in that technology, get the get the money figured out, the data sharing, the governance over that technology and put that in place.
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Steve Monaghan
And I think that's our main role. And the better we have that organizational infrastructure in place, the more technology we have in our organization and the the more productive our employees are and the more services we have online for our residents. And I think to me, that's the most exciting part. You know, it's not the sexiest part. It's kind of the, you know, the under the waterline iceberg stuff, but it's the most crucial, critical, critical part to be able to do that portfolio management and get everybody to make decisions and just continue a slate, be pushing the envelope of getting these new tools and resources in the hands of our employees.
00;10;00;26 - 00;10;43;13
Steve Monaghan
So back to the trends question. You know, it's all the cloud stuff that that's coming online and employees using that collaboration, especially with the pandemic. You know, one of the biggest needs right now is how do we support a hybrid workforce? And, you know, we have these collaboration tools we're using. We're really pushing process automation hard and trying to find that balance because our employees are getting overload with meetings because these collaboration tools are so great, they're so easy to use that, you know, everybody is just back to back meetings all day long now.
00;10;43;16 - 00;11;09;26
Steve Monaghan
You know, there's no downtime. So, you know, you got to we have to work closely with our h.r. Director and our ceo and set culture in that organization about how do we use these tools now for just overloaded staff because they're so easy to use and anybody can set a meeting. And so there's a real balance there. Right?
00;11;09;28 - 00;11;32;25
Davood Ghods
Thank you. I completely agree with you that the role of the CIO is still being the change agent and the market there to move the organization up the maturity curve. Right. It's true. Cloud technologies, if it's through collaboration tools, whatever, as you called it, the flavor of the day or I call it the father of the day is.
00;11;32;27 - 00;12;03;25
Davood Ghods
Yes. So my next question is regarding the pandemic. And I think you would agree that adjusting to the pandemic was challenging for all organizations, and now everyone is thinking of what the next major disruption is going to be and how can they better be prepared for it. So resiliency is a big topic of conversation these days. We offer a resilience as a service with indirect technology, for example. What are some examples of resilience you have seen or you've implemented in the past year? And what is the one thing organizations should be doing to improve resilience?
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Steve Monaghan
So as a rural community in the Sierra Hills and we even go over the summit treaty, we we have to be resilient as an organization. So recently we had the snowstorm.
00;12;34;00 - 00;13;00;26
Steve Monaghan
Two thirds of our citizenry, our residents lost power for four or five days, and a number of our residents, probably another third, went all the way up to the longest. Folks were without power for 14 days. Wow. So how do you prepare for that? You know, that's that's like having the whole pandemic in a two week period. Right.
00;13;00;29 - 00;13;41;00
Steve Monaghan
Disruption. And, you know, it goes back to, you know, that the fundamentals of IP generators, redundant systems, you know, we had just put in a new voice over IP platform. We had redundant SIP trucks and we tested the redundancy with our consultants, put that in it. Well, go figure out the redundancy that works, you know, So I went on our our main set provider went offline and failed over to the second SIP provider and something, something was out of whack somehow, someway and yet we didn't have phones on top of that for about two days.
00;13;41;03 - 00;14;04;07
Steve Monaghan
So those are the things we see as a rural county that we really have to look at. So my big initiative right now, it's kind of tied to our cybersecurity initiative too, is really working with our business units on continuity planning. So they have to have business continuity plans put in place. And we did this way back then.
00;14;04;07 - 00;14;35;06
Steve Monaghan
All governments did it for, if you remember, the avian flu. Yes. Yeah, right. So we all did ration planning, right? Yeah. And how do you devolve services And what if you only have half your staff and some of that worked when we came into to the pandemic now. But we need to take a better look at the business continuity planning.
00;14;35;06 - 00;15;13;13
Steve Monaghan
What are they going to do without technology for a day or five days? You know, we're seeing these malware events where people are out for two or three weeks, you know, so how do we make sure we have the technology platforms in place, the backup systems to disaster recovery, you know, the cloud resources in place that we can either continue uninterrupted or recover it quickly because it's a reality now that we're all going to get hit with malware and some kind of cybersecurity event.
00;15;13;15 - 00;15;46;01
Steve Monaghan
Right. So how it's not a matter of just focusing on, you know, keeping the barbarians at the gate, but how are we going to recover from the incident? That is sure to happen. Exactly. Thank you for sharing a very recent and very real example of something that the residents of your county went through. And, you know, I always say on this question to our guests that, you know, we got to be ready for natural disasters such as flooding, earthquake fires.
00;15;46;03 - 00;16;13;01
Steve Monaghan
And now I have to add severe bad weather, too. So testing that plan, it becomes very important to make sure that the disaster recovery plan you have in place will work. So thank you. At direct technology, we always talk about how we are going to get something done, a project done with. We also ask why we are doing what we are doing.
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Davood Ghods
Steve, what is your why? In other words, what motivates you in your work every day?
00;16;45;18 - 00;17;27;17
Steve Monaghan
You know, that's a that's a question. And, you know, ever since Simon Sinek came out with his book and his TEDx Talk No year, why, there's been a lot of you know, that was all the buzz for a while. We did those exercises too, with our team, and I think as a senior executive, you have to come up with your why personally. And my why is is really based on my close relationship with this community that I live, that I chose to live in this community and then work in the public sector. And fortunately, it worked out for me. And I view my job now as I'm here to help my boss, the county executive officer and our board of Supervisors, which is our elected board of directors, make this community the best place to live, to raise kids, to have a high quality of life.
00;17;27;19 - 00;18;12;24
Steve Monaghan
And I do that by making my agency the most functional, efficient agency, delivering the services to all of the other departments. So they can do their missions well as well. We have direct services that we do to the community, to the public library system, the airport road, the Office of Emergency Services. So taking that perspective of how do we make this a better place to live and that that's what drives me and and backing that down into all of our other strategic plans and initiatives that we do and the actual service delivery side of the shop.
00;18;12;26 - 00;18;38;12
Steve Monaghan
Right. It I'm sure it impacts and over, you know impacts that strategic plan to you know making your community better than you found it. That's great right. And you can't you know, we don't do technology for technology. So, you know, we do it with a purpose in mind, always with the end result. How is this better benefiting our residents?
00;18;38;19 - 00;19;10;19
Steve Monaghan
You know, absolute, you know, and trying to connect to that mission. And sometimes, you know, for staff, special staff on The Help Desk, you know, they might be four iterations removed from that direct mission. So we're always trying to help staff know their way to and get them out working hands on with our customer department staff and showing how they're using our services to meet that mission as well.
00;19;10;21 - 00;19;50;27
Davood Dhods
Right. Excellent. Now, going from your constituents in your community to your teams and you've had many teams and you still do within different divisions of your county. What inspires innovation on your team? Steve I think culture really fires up well, that's a good question on is it inspiration or is is that culture that drives innovation or is it necessity?
00;19;50;27 - 00;20;13;08
Steve Monaghan
Right? So without the right culture, you know, people won't innovate. You don't have the time, they don't have the capacity, they don't have the energy, they don't have the permission. So we do a lot of culture work. We're doing a big culture refresh now, you know, And it's you know, you have to spend at least 20% of your time working on the business rather than working in the business right now.
00;20;13;10 - 00;20;50;05
Steve Monaghan
So constantly trying to work on that culture and really a culture of entrepreneurship across our employee is and we work really hard on kind of a service management program where every product we have, every service we deliver, there's a there's a staff person who owns that that is given a set of expectations around entrepreneurship and driving innovation to make that product that service better.
00;20;50;05 - 00;21;33;19
Steve Monaghan
So we're constantly trying to drive that culture so that we do that at a staff level and then we try to show that to our customers as well. And drive innovation from their perspective, we're showing them what's possible. I talk a lot with my Information Systems Analyst Group, which are, you know, our business analysts are developers, that our job is just to let our customers know what's possible, because a lot of times they don't know, they don't know artful toolset or what they can actually do.
00;21;33;24 - 00;22;03;08
Steve Monaghan
You know how we could take and put a form and a service online and make life much easier for them around a business process. So part of our job is showing them that you know what's possible, Right? Right. Very good. Yeah, definitely. Culture is very important because you have to let your teams know that it's okay to fail in small ways and fail fast.
00;22;03;11 - 00;22;36;20
Steve Monaghan
And the culture is what is going to let them know that in order for them to try different things, to try new things and communicating that with your customers and your constituents. So Steve, what is something that would surprise people about your background, their interests, something that not too many people know and you're willing to share? I think I don't know how surprising that is, but I'm a big mountain biker.
00;22;36;20 - 00;23;03;25
Steve Monaghan
You know, we live up here in mountain bike country and I try to get out three or four times a week and I like to I wear my headphones and I listen to a lot of leadership books. You know, that's where I try to stay current. And so I get a lot of time in listening to that. That's, you know, one of the reasons why we live up here is I've got like an 11 minute commute.
00;23;03;25 - 00;23;25;18
Steve Monaghan
So I drive. So I get that on my mountain bike, which is really great. So you know what I really want to be able to do? You know, I'm getting towards the end of my county career, is trying to figure out how do I marry mountain biking with I.T. Leadership? You know what? So I leadership is a real passion of mine.
00;23;25;18 - 00;24;04;19
Steve Monaghan
You know, I've I've, I truly believe that as leaders in the public sector, we have an obligation to give back, you know, to share what we've learned and to help the next generation of leaders come up. And i've been working on that really hard work with Csac, the County Association of supervisors and our county i.t. CIO association. Sister, we've created this i.t leadership credential program and i'm teaching a class coming up next week on i.t organizational design.
00;24;04;22 - 00;24;40;06
Steve Monaghan
So i just think, you know, trying to give back if i if i could marry mountain biking with i.t. Leadership. Yeah. Have a part time retirement gig. That's what that would do. Yeah. That sounds pretty interesting because there is a lot of other i.t. Leaders in the community that also do bicycling and it's a passion of them. I did a podcast with Kristian Ferland, the cio of calpers, and he was mentioning that he does Sacramento, San Francisco a few times a year.
00;24;40;09 - 00;25;04;10
Steve Monaghan
So yeah, you know, maybe you can put out a conference or an event where you could have a stop somewhere to have the conference, but then all the participants or those who are interested can do mountain biking or bicycling with you. I would love to know something like that. That's. That's one way to marry the two. Yeah. Yeah.
00;25;04;13 - 00;25;34;05
Steve Monaghan
See, where can people find you and keep tabs on what you're working on? How can people support your work so I have a LinkedIn, so it's a link and Steve Monahan one and you could go there and connect with me. Right now I'm doing a series of articles for our CRC, which is our regional county, rural county Association.
00;25;34;05 - 00;26;17;01
Steve Monaghan
So there's 38 rural counties in California and it's all about it's their IT governance series. I'm doing a series of six articles for them, really trying to educate county supervisors on their role with I.T leadership and their responsibility for it oversight and what they can do. So I did one first one was in december on cybersecurity and last month was on rural broadband and then on this month is on rural telecommunication and starting an emergency act in my Snowden events. Yeah yeah. So anyway it's link to display the best way for people to get ahold.
00;26;17;03 - 00;26;42;18
Davood Ghods
Great. Great. Thank you for offering all of those channels and you have live examples to talk about in your classes. Excellent. Thank you so much for joining us today. Steve. I am really envious of your 11 minute commute, though. Yeah, thanks to all the listeners also out there for joining us as well.
00;26;42;20 - 00;26;58;04
Davood Ghods
We will see you in the next episode of The Food for Thought, where we will shed more light on the human side of tech.