(Editor’s note: John Thomas Flynn was California state CIO from 1995-99.) If you live in California, you probably already know the story of the state government unemployment insurance (UI) system’s performance debacle over the past year. And if you live elsewhere – and the story got lost in the avalanche of pandemic-driven bad news over […]

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the city of El Cajon in California’s San Diego County did a couple of things that have made transitioning to virtual services somewhat easier. The city government tracked residents’ interactions with City Hall and thought about how citizens wanted to work with their local government, the city’s IT director said.

California’s City of Corona is a full-service city southeast of Los Angeles.  Corona serves over 168,000 residents with 22 departments.  Each boasts a diverse portfolio of citizen services, including utilities and public safety.  Corona’s Information Technology (IT) Department must provide reliable and cost-effective systems to support the City’s function and objectives – even through disaster or pandemic. 

California legislators on Sept. 12 passed a bill that would ban facial recognition technologies in state and local law enforcement body cameras for three years.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Sept. 28 signed into law S.B. 327, which will ban companies from selling Internet-connected devices with weak or default passwords, such as “Password” or “1234567.” Instead, beginning on Jan. 1, 2020, all devices must have a “preprogrammed password [that] is unique to each device manufactured.” A primary concern with weak pre-programmed passwords is that users don’t change them to strong, unique passwords after purchasing the device.

California Governor Jerry Brown on Sept. 29 signed S.B. 1001 into law. The legislation prohibits automated accounts–colloquially known as bots–from pretending to be human when attempting to “incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction or to influence a vote in an election.”

California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown on Sunday signed S.B. 822 , which restores in the state Obama-era Federal net neutrality laws that were gutted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this year.

California’s state Assembly is attempting to turn back time on net neutrality by voting yesterday to approve a controversial bill that brings the state closer to enacting the Obama-era Federal net neutrality laws that were gutted by the FCC earlier this year.

Wildfires have ravaged Northern California this fall, leaving more than 100,000 residents temporarily or permanently displaced. To improve communication with residents, and lessen the workload for damage inspectors, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection partnered with GIS software developer Esri on a new interactive map that communicates the status of the homes and buildings across Napa and Sonoma counties.