Clark Kelso, California's CIO

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But the Davis administration felt it was important to continue having a senior IT adviser, so it retained the position of CIO and got rid of the staff, keeping a single assistant. In 2005, Schwarzenegger also created a state Department of Technology Services, but its responsibilities are primarily focused on operating several data centers.

Kelso performs his state duties on a part-time basis and spends the rest of his time teaching classes at University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law. Though his profession is the law, he has an extensive IT background and recalls even as a teenager in the 1970s helping his parents program and troubleshoot legal instruction software.

But for a part-time job, he works almost full-time hours. And despite the limited resources, he has earned high praise for his work. Computerworld named him one of the “Premier 100 IT Leaders of 2007,” and Government Technology magazine in 2004 listed him among the country’s “Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers.”

Carol Henton, vice president of the Information Technology Association of America, says Kelso has an excellent reputation as someone with the leadership to bring together dozens of people from diverse backgrounds, whether they are department heads or private executives, and get them to agree on a common vision.

“He has done incredibly well,” notes Henton, who had 25 years’ experience in Silicon Valley before joining the association. “Clark has appreciated the need for the public sector and the private sector to work together to accomplish things in the interest of the state. He’s been collaborative and forthcoming with industry about the needs and direction of the government.”

As CIO, Kelso has created several councils to foster coordination between information managers in various state agencies. He has also been involved in projects to improve the state’s social service case management and child-support systems.

Besides FI$Cal, one of his major projects is to put himself out of a job.

Kelso and the administration are working to restore the CIO to a full-time position with statutory authority and 30 to 40 staffers. Individual agencies will still mostly handle their own IT, but the new agency will help coordinate and oversee their efforts.

When that new CIO position is created — probably early next year — Kelso does not see himself filling that spot. He’s too happy, he says, with his tenured law school position. Besides, he likes being the fix-it guy — or, right now, the fix-I.T. guy — not the running-a-department-that-works-just-fine guy. And he expects there will be plenty of new crises to tackle in the future.

“Having been CIO for five-plus years, I’ve accomplished a hell of a lot more than I thought I would,” he says. “And with this year’s budget, I will have accomplished the initial goals that I set for myself when I took the job, which were to get the scandal behind us (and) get the state’s IT program back on its feet.

“I’m in a very comfortable position to say, let someone else now take this load and push it forward, and I can take a break and wait for the next assignment.”

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