State Assemblymember David Chiu, D-San Francisco, is calling for a widespread update of California’s information technology systems following several failed or delayed efforts to modernize them over the past few years.
“Our state’s IT systems have been decentralized, disjointed and dysfunctional, and the experience for everyday Californians of government has been incredibly confusing and stressful,” Chiu said in an interview.
The state of California has more than 130 individual IT shops across its various departments, each managed individually. Some of the state’s largest agencies, including the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Employment Development Department, rely on COBOL, a decades-old computer programming language, for some of their operations. During the pandemic, EDD has had numerous issues with its systems, resulting in delayed unemployment checks and billions paid out in fraudulent claims.
Chiu said it’s time for a change.
He has introduced Assembly Bill 1323, which would give the California Department of Technology power to prioritize which older systems should be upgraded first. The bill also calls for the agency to identify which IT services could be centralized across departments and how to make that happen.
Chiu said, too often, the department is treated like an emergency room physician.
“They are brought in to try to create the IT defibrillator experience when a project is on life support,” he said. “And they’re expected to fix something that’s been broken for quite some time. And they’re brought in, often, too late to resuscitate a completely dysfunctional modernization project.”
Despite being the home of some of the largest technology companies on the world, Chiu said the state has a dismal record when it comes to managing its own IT systems.
“It seems like most times the state has tried to modernize a department system, something goes massively wrong,” he said. “These efforts have been way over budget, woefully behind and plagued by major glitches.”
