Clark Kelso, California's CIO

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Clark Kelso is the state's handyman. When a department seems broken or plagued by scandal, he’s the one brought in to fix it.

When the Department of Insurance was rocked by the scandal involving former Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush, it was Kelso who was drafted to help run the department after Quackenbush’s resignation.

Then when the state’s Department of Information Technology went through its own scandal involving the no-bid procurement of an overpriced $95 million system from Oracle Corp., once again, former Gov. Gray Davis turned to Kelso, appointing him in 2002 as the state’s chief information officer to replace the agency head who resigned. Five years later, Kelso continues to hold that position after being retained by Gov. Schwarzenegger.

Kelso says he prefers the idea of helping agencies in crisis and then leaving after they are back on track rather than simply running a department that already operates smoothly. “I enjoy the risk that comes with major organizational change and crisis management,” Kelso says, “and I think I happen to be pretty decent at it.”

Kelso’s résumé also includes stints as acting director of the Department of General Services and “scholar-in-residence” in the state court system advising the chief justice on major projects such as trial court unification and computer improvements.

He also serves as chair of the California Earthquake Authority and is assisting the state’s two major tax boards with a tax law simplification project. All this while also teaching law school at University of the Pacific for the last 20 years.

As CIO, getting the state’s information technology structure back on track has taken a little longer than he expected.

That 70's Show

Some of the state’s systems are 30-year-old antiques. One example: If a state agency wants to pay a bill, staffers enter the information into their computers, print it, then deliver the printout to the State Controller’s Office, which then has to retype the information into its system because the computers have no technical compatibility from one agency to another. “We’re just a few decades behind current best practices,” he says.

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