Ep.172 Creating a Transformational IT Culture in Santa Barbara County with Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County

Joe Toste [00:00:00]:
Hey, what's up everybody? This is Joe Toste from Techtables.com and you're listening to the public sector show by techtables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector, CIOs, CISOs and technology leaders across federal, state, city, county and higher education. You'll gain valuable insights into current issues and challenges faced by top leaders through interviews, speaking engagements, live podcast tour events. We offer you a behind the mic look at the opportunities top lead ears are seen today. And to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Spotify and Apple podcasts. Hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves.

Joe Toste [00:00:34]:
The CIO for the county of Santa Barbara. Chris, welcome to the public sector show by tech tables.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:00:40]:
I appreciate it, Joe, good to see you and glad to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.

Joe Toste [00:00:44]:
I'm very excited. It's been a lot of fun getting to know you over the last couple months and excited to share a little bit about your journey today. So you transitioned from selling your small business landspeed, which, funny note, I was at Kiva cowork this week and the Internet was slow, and I went to the front desk and I said, hey, any way we can talk to Landspeed about getting Internet speed quicker? And they're like, how do you know about land speed? I was like, funny story, small world podcast.

Joe Toste [00:01:12]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:01:13]:
So from that to becoming the CIO for Santa Barbara county, what motivated the change? How has your private sector experience influenced.

Joe Toste [00:01:21]:
Your approach to the public sector? Love to hear from you.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:01:25]:
Yeah, so a little bit of background. I started Landspeed, or I should say became the owner of Landspeed in 2005. And so I ran the company from 2005 to 2021. We were an IT services provider, primarily managed services. Most of our clients were on contracts with us, and we served both public sector and private sector all over the central coast, even down into Los Angeles, and several counties were clients of ours. We worked with a lot of cities.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:01:57]:
And so I became fairly familiar with kind of the public sector from an.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:02:02]:
IT perspective and had built some relationships there. In 2021, I had the opportunity to sell my company and did that and wasn't sure what was going to be next for me. For a year, I consulted back to the new owners of my former company, and during that period of time, I was meeting with both a mentor and a career coach. He's become a good friend of mine, and through that process, there was a couple of things that really stood out to me.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:02:37]:
One of them was I really realized.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:02:40]:
How passionate I was about building things, and especially when it comes to building teams and a culture and growing teams. And for me, I knew I needed that kind of next challenge, that next.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:02:54]:
Opportunity, that next thing to build.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:02:57]:
I never would have guessed, though, that it would have been stepping into the public sector. I was thinking, maybe I'll start up a new company. But I had two or three friends that reached out to me in, let's see, this was in the spring of 2022. They reached out and said, hey, Chris.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:03:14]:
The county of Santa Barbara does not.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:03:17]:
Have a chief information officer. They want to hire one. They're very decentralized. They've got it staff spread all across different departments. And they said that my friend said.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:03:29]:
You should apply for that position.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:03:32]:
And so I talked to my mentor, career coach, and he told me, he said, he said, that's something that you might be interested in because you'd be the first CIO for the county of Santa Barbara.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:03:42]:
Which building?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:03:44]:
Building new opportunities, building up the team, forming a new standalone department within the county, because previously, again, everything was decentralized.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:03:54]:
And so the more I thought about it, I thought, that does sound like.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:03:57]:
Something that I'd be interested in.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:03:58]:
Applied.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:03:59]:
Fast forward three to four months. I was offered the position and I started in September of 22 as Santa Barbara's first CIO. Now, I've been here 18 months and really enjoying this opportunity. There's certainly a lot of differences between a small private sector business and working for a larger public sector organization. Just to give you a sense of the size, we have close to 5000 employees here at the county of Santa Barbara. Our county budget is around 1.51.6 billion.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:04:34]:
And then within it, there are about.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:04:37]:
70 IT staff now within our central IT department.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:04:42]:
And there's another probably 100 IT staff distributed amongst the other 20 ish departments.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:04:48]:
Here at the county. So that's the makeup. So that's the background, that's where I'm at today. And I know you asked also, I think you said, what are the differences or what are some of the things that I've seen between private and public sector?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:05:02]:
Things move slowly or more slowly in the public sector.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:05:06]:
And I knew that coming in that I wouldn't be able to move as.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:05:08]:
Quickly and be as nimble as I was when I owned my own company. Learning how to navigate through all of.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:05:16]:
Those layers and just the system, learning how to navigate that, learning how to work effectively with department heads and elected officials, that was something somewhat new that I didn't have to deal with in the private sector. But I've enjoyed the opportunity. I've learned a lot. I've learned the importance of building relationships.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:05:36]:
Learning how to work with and understand the needs of each department, and yet at the same time, accomplish the critical.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:05:46]:
Goals of managing it across all departments. And so there's a balance there, and so learned a lot in that area. But I would say the one thing that hasn't changed between private sector and.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:05:59]:
Public sector is how important it is to be an effective leader. And that doesn't change. We're still dealing with people and the.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:06:09]:
Importance of creating clarity around roles and responsibilities, the importance of setting core values within an organization, the importance of building a strong culture.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:06:22]:
All of those things span across any kind of organization.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:06:27]:
And so a lot of the lessons that I've learned from building a team and building a strong culture in the private sector have worked really well here.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:06:37]:
In the county of Santa Barbara as well.

Joe Toste [00:06:39]:
That was a fantastic summary of most of our episode. So we're going to dive into a lot of that that Chris just talked about. One thing that came to mind. How many employees did you have at the top?

Joe Toste [00:06:49]:
At the highest peak?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:06:50]:
Yeah, we were at about 20 employees.

Joe Toste [00:06:53]:
So pretty small. Yeah, I love that. Right now it's me.

Joe Toste [00:06:57]:
My wife helps out a little bit and then some camera contractors in that.

Joe Toste [00:07:01]:
And then going through the process, owning a small business, the one thing I.

Joe Toste [00:07:07]:
Like is I'm basically accountable to myself.

Joe Toste [00:07:12]:
And my wife is scary.

Joe Toste [00:07:16]:
Being working with elected officials, you now have probably there's a lot more stakeholders involved versus you just going, hey, I'm just going to do this.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:07:24]:
So certainly learning how to navigate that, because that is very different. I report up to an assistant CEO at the county. I have a great relationship with her.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:07:32]:
And I meet every month with the.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:07:35]:
CEO of the county as well. And then I meet on a quarterly basis with each of the supervisors. There's five supervisors here, meet with them, and then on a fairly regular basis.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:07:47]:
Have meetings or in depth conversations with the 20.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:07:52]:
I believe there's 22 other department heads learning how to have regular communication, understand each of their perspectives, each of their needs, and again, trying to get all of that, understand all of those needs and wants, and then how do we, with limited resources, how do we try to accomplish all of that? That's really where the challenge comes, right? You can't do everything at once. There's always way more initiatives than we have time and resources to deal with it. But that's where things like effective governance comes in and learning how to prioritize projects, get buy in from the different department heads and the importance, again, just of communication and strong relationships. I think the more that you can have a strong relationship with each of those individuals that I mentioned, the more support you're going to receive and understanding if maybe some department's project has to be pushed back a little bit. They're going to be more understanding if.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:08:49]:
They have a clear understanding of the.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:08:52]:
Overall picture, but definitely not easy to navigate all of that.

Joe Toste [00:08:57]:
I've got quite a few thoughts.

Joe Toste [00:08:58]:
One, I think a lot of times, being a small business owner, you probably have an appreciation for the lack of resources. I think sometimes you're in the private.

Joe Toste [00:09:11]:
Sector group, but I'm like private sector bootstrapping this thing is way different than raising a bunch of money. And so I definitely feel like there's.

Joe Toste [00:09:20]:
A lot of initiatives.

Joe Toste [00:09:22]:
My problem is I have a lot of ideas and the most important thing for me was creating a someday maybe.

Joe Toste [00:09:27]:
List because my mind doesn't stop at night at all. It just keeps running and I've got way less cash than I do ideas.

Joe Toste [00:09:37]:
I didn't know there was a CEO or an assistant CEO. I guess I knew I would know of the supervisors.

Joe Toste [00:09:44]:
And I guess meeting with the department heads makes sense.

Joe Toste [00:09:47]:
I wonder if that's the same structure for other counties.

Joe Toste [00:09:50]:
I assume it's somewhat similar. Yeah, but that's a really great insight. I only just thought of CEOs in that kind of private sector sense.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:10:01]:
Many counties have a CAO, a chief administrative officer, which is really the same thing. It's just certain counties, they're chief executive officers, other counties, chief administrative officers.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:10:12]:
But like I said, they're identical positions.

Joe Toste [00:10:15]:
Yeah. Okay, that's good.

Joe Toste [00:10:16]:
I'm on the same page. See, I might need to be your intern for a month or something at some point.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:10:21]:
You're welcome.

Joe Toste [00:10:24]:
And actually I am going to do this.

Joe Toste [00:10:26]:
This is an idea I have that.

Joe Toste [00:10:28]:
I want to do so bad and I just have to be patient.

Joe Toste [00:10:31]:
But I'm going to do a series.

Joe Toste [00:10:33]:
It'll be an onsite series.

Joe Toste [00:10:35]:
It'll have to be with the right people. But I want to do like a.

Joe Toste [00:10:38]:
State, CIO, county, city, maybe an agency.

Joe Toste [00:10:42]:
Where it's a day in the life and they'll just let me and someone.

Joe Toste [00:10:46]:
From my camera team follow that person.

Joe Toste [00:10:48]:
Around and have a mini mapped out day. I think would be an awesome series to develop.

Joe Toste [00:10:55]:
I think would really give a lot.

Joe Toste [00:10:56]:
Of insight to a lot of different folks.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:10:58]:
I think you'd learn a lot and you're welcome to come do that.

Joe Toste [00:11:02]:
Okay, cool.

Joe Toste [00:11:02]:
I basically just pitched that to you. And now I'm going to set that up. So earlier you talked about the importance of core values and culture. I love this. This was something that, when I went.

Joe Toste [00:11:14]:
To college a number of years ago.

Joe Toste [00:11:17]:
Read in a business book and kind.

Joe Toste [00:11:18]:
Of just tossed like a Frisbee.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:11:20]:
I don't know.

Joe Toste [00:11:21]:
You read this as a 20 year.

Joe Toste [00:11:22]:
Old or whatever, and it's not something.

Joe Toste [00:11:24]:
That you think is really that important. But recently I had some friends who.

Joe Toste [00:11:30]:
Are running really big companies compared to.

Joe Toste [00:11:32]:
What I'm running, and they got me hooked on EOs and EOs life and the book traction. And you're such a big fan. So I think I really connected on that with you, but I was really curious. This is fascinating. The fascinating piece was how you took.

Joe Toste [00:11:51]:
The EOS framework and used it to.

Joe Toste [00:11:54]:
Elevate the county of Santa Barbara it department, taking those principles and really layering them on, especially the culture piece.

Joe Toste [00:12:07]:
And I absolutely love that. Over winter break, Jamie and I sat down.

Joe Toste [00:12:12]:
We were figuring out, hey, what are our core values? And I love the story that you.

Joe Toste [00:12:16]:
Already told me, but I would love.

Joe Toste [00:12:18]:
For you to share on the podcast.

Joe Toste [00:12:19]:
Is the story of when you came.

Joe Toste [00:12:21]:
In, taking a step back and figuring out, what is it that we really believe? What do we really care about? Can you share that story for everybody?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:12:29]:
Yeah.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:12:29]:
So I was first introduced to traction probably about ten years ago when I had my IT services company and I.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:12:37]:
Was part of a peer group.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:12:39]:
We all read the book traction, and.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:12:41]:
We began to implement the ideas that.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:12:45]:
Traction talks about within each of our businesses. And it made a huge impact on my company back then. We sat down, we focused on what's our mission, vision and values.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:12:56]:
We set out to create annual goals.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:13:00]:
And then we built our quarterly goals. We started having daily huddles. We had our one on one meetings.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:13:08]:
We used the best practices or the.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:13:11]:
Principles of meeting management that traction talks about. Anyway, there's so many great organizational principles.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:13:19]:
In that book that I implemented in my previous company, and it really made a huge impact on my previous business. What I didn't know is, would it work in the public sector? I didn't know.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:13:33]:
And I hadn't talked to anybody that.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:13:35]:
Had implemented traction in a county government.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:13:39]:
And so I decided, I'm going to try. And so when I came into the county, within the first couple of months, brought the leadership team together and said, okay, we're going to go through a mission vision values exercise. And we did an offsite retreat and we came up with our mission vision, values.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:13:56]:
And I honestly think that the leadership.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:13:59]:
Team probably thought, oh, here we go again, coming up with a mission, vision, values. It's going to be put on a poster, it's going to be put on a wall, and that's the last we'll ever see of it or hear of it.

Joe Toste [00:14:10]:
Right?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:14:11]:
Because they've been through a similar exercise many times in the past.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:14:15]:
And I just said, just watch what happens.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:14:19]:
And so we began to really infuse the core values throughout everything we were doing within the ITD team here at the county. In our weekly meetings, we would do call outs for team members that were aligning with core values. We'd recognize them. We even aligned our core values with our employee performance reviews. And so how is each member of.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:14:46]:
The team doing show?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:14:47]:
Are they aligning with our core values? And so we began to implement it, really through everything, the hiring process, the interviews, all of that. And so I can tell you now.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:14:57]:
It'S almost a daily conversation where something.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:01]:
Comes up around those core values, and it's made a huge impact on how.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:05]:
We operate as a team, internally and.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:08]:
Externally, how we treat others and really their behaviors of how we want to operate. So that's been a huge impact, and that worked really well.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:17]:
Then what we did is we sat.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:19]:
Down and we had every single member.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:21]:
Of our team create annual goals and quarterly goals.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:26]:
And I can tell you we're in.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:28]:
The third quarter of our fiscal year.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:32]:
And we have already, as a team, accomplished over 300 goals. Those 300 goals would not have been accomplished if we wouldn't have gone through this exercise, created a smartsheet where everybody's goals are visible to the whole team.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:48]:
And what's the status of those goals?

Joe Toste [00:15:51]:
Right.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:15:51]:
That accountability, that visibility that creates has been huge to the progress that we're making here as a team.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:16:01]:
And the team gets excited when we review these goals. They see all of the work that's been done. They recognize that this is making a.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:16:10]:
Positive impact on the work that we're doing here within the IT department of the counties.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:16:16]:
Those are just some of the examples of how we've implemented traction and the EOS model within the public sector. I'm proof that those principles work in.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:16:26]:
Both private and public sector.

Joe Toste [00:16:29]:
Yeah, I absolutely love that so much. It is just so game changing.

Joe Toste [00:16:37]:
You talk about the clarity and simplicity of it. When I was breaking down the core.

Joe Toste [00:16:45]:
Values for myself, it attracts and repels the right stuff, and I just love.

Joe Toste [00:16:51]:
So I brought up the five tech tables, core values that we came up with. First one was gratitude with Thanksgiving.

Joe Toste [00:16:59]:
Second one was transformation through relationship the third one is all things done with.

Joe Toste [00:17:05]:
Excellence and high integrity.

Joe Toste [00:17:06]:
The fourth one was imagination and creativity.

Joe Toste [00:17:09]:
And the last one was beat yesterday.

Joe Toste [00:17:13]:
And it helped me really figure out with some people why there was friction happening. And I was reflecting, like, why is there such friction happening? And then I started realizing like, oh, this person just likes the status quo.

Joe Toste [00:17:28]:
It's just that the don't want to.

Joe Toste [00:17:29]:
Change and I'm pushing this rock up this hill and it's just not going to work. I'm like, okay. And it was just really helpful for me to just go, hey, I want.

Joe Toste [00:17:41]:
To hang out with people like this, not like this.

Joe Toste [00:17:44]:
And I think sometimes in business you hear the word like tribe. And so I'm like, hey, this is.

Joe Toste [00:17:49]:
The type of tribe of people that I want to build with tech tables. And you mentioned something that's, I know.

Joe Toste [00:17:55]:
Sometimes that's where people go, this is like fluffy.

Joe Toste [00:17:58]:
It sounds nice, but the moment that you can get that down, then you.

Joe Toste [00:18:04]:
Layer on the smartsheet, which you were talking about. And this could be any spreadsheet or anything. But I love what you said about visibility and accountability. This is a totally game changer.

Joe Toste [00:18:13]:
I think along the lines there's a.

Joe Toste [00:18:15]:
Software, I think it's like a licensed.

Joe Toste [00:18:17]:
Provider, but I think it's called 90 IO.

Joe Toste [00:18:22]:
And they're an EOS software. They have literally the whole EOS system, which is so cool.

Joe Toste [00:18:32]:
They have the scorecard, the rocks, the.

Joe Toste [00:18:34]:
IDs, the meetings, and the scorecard is huge. So I feel like if you are not scorecarding, you're really missing out on the visibility and accountability. And so I would be interested, do you scorecard on a weekly basis, a monthly basis for the county?

Joe Toste [00:18:52]:
How did you end up transferring that over?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:18:55]:
Yeah, that's a great question.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:18:56]:
And we have not implemented all of.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:19:00]:
The principles or the functionalities of the EOS model, and we've implemented some of them. And I think that's the beauty of it, is you don't have to do everything by the book, right? Even if you implement a third of what they said, you're going to see significant progress. With our scorecarding. We look at it on a monthly basis, and that seems to be about.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:19:23]:
A good cadence for us in that regards.

Joe Toste [00:19:26]:
Yeah, no, that's awesome.

Joe Toste [00:19:27]:
I love what you said about the quarterly goals. I love the idea of rocks.

Joe Toste [00:19:32]:
You can call them whatever you want.

Joe Toste [00:19:33]:
But of not changing.

Joe Toste [00:19:36]:
This is very helpful.

Joe Toste [00:19:37]:
For in EOs, they describe the visionary and the integrator. I'm very much the visionary, and I.

Joe Toste [00:19:46]:
Do not have anyone who's the integrator operator yet?

Joe Toste [00:19:50]:
But I know I need one now because I know I am very idea.

Joe Toste [00:19:55]:
But tying that back to what you talked about roles and this is another.

Joe Toste [00:20:01]:
Unlock for me because I was thinking about all of the tasks I do.

Joe Toste [00:20:05]:
Which is everything in this, right?

Joe Toste [00:20:08]:
And I'm like, oh, this isn't something.

Joe Toste [00:20:10]:
I have to be doing.

Joe Toste [00:20:12]:
There's a role and I'm wearing this hat right now.

Joe Toste [00:20:15]:
Yes, at some point.

Joe Toste [00:20:17]:
So what I started doing was documenting everything for that role and it'll take some time, but I'm timing how long.

Joe Toste [00:20:26]:
These tasks take and I'm like, oh.

Joe Toste [00:20:30]:
This thing might take 7 hours to get done. Wow, okay, where can I improve this? Am I documenting this correctly and then looking to hire someone to fill that in? I'm sure that reminds you of a younger self on the journey of figure this out.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:20:46]:
As a small business owner, you wear multiple hats.

Joe Toste [00:20:50]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:20:51]:
And then a few others just to highlight.

Joe Toste [00:20:54]:
I love the term ids a lot in the book.

Joe Toste [00:20:58]:
I think it was in traction that it talks about. A lot of times when you have.

Joe Toste [00:21:01]:
A meeting, I notice a lot of people end up dumping their issues, but.

Joe Toste [00:21:06]:
Then nothing gets resolved at the end of the meeting. And I think this spoke to me.

Joe Toste [00:21:10]:
When I was like, this is exactly.

Joe Toste [00:21:12]:
Like any company I've ever worked at. This has been the problem. People dump their problems but don't arrive at a solution. And what I love about the ids piece is you just go through the.

Joe Toste [00:21:24]:
Process of collecting and you have the.

Joe Toste [00:21:27]:
Weekly review, the l ten, and you're just going through it. And it just gives you such a great framework to gather issues, to document.

Joe Toste [00:21:37]:
Issues, but not go down the rabbit hole. And then you can start addressing short.

Joe Toste [00:21:43]:
Term, long term, and just getting to the facts of the situation.

Joe Toste [00:21:47]:
So all that being said, my last.

Joe Toste [00:21:50]:
Favorite piece of it was in this software. It's pretty funny.

Joe Toste [00:21:53]:
They have an accountability chart.

Joe Toste [00:21:56]:
And I told my wife, I said, hey Jamie, can you see all of the seats and chairs in the company? She said, yeah. I said, do you see all these problems we have that we're trying to fix? She said, yeah. I said, do you see all the faces here? She says, yeah. Why are they all your faces? And I'm like, that's exactly it. I hold every role in this right now.

Joe Toste [00:22:16]:
I got a lot out of that.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:22:18]:
Yeah, but that's normal, right? Any small business that starts with the owner, the entrepreneur, and you do have to wear all the different hats, right? And as you grow, just like you.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:22:29]:
Said, you start to put others into those areas.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:22:34]:
And so it's just part of it.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:22:36]:
And it's really, even in an organization our size, we still have individuals that.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:22:42]:
Still have to cover multiple responsibilities. Right. If we had unlimited resources, I'd have dedicated people in each of toste seats.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:22:49]:
But resources are finite, and so we.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:22:53]:
Have to learn how to balance responsibilities amongst the team.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:23:01]:
That issue that you brought up, it's still there.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:23:05]:
Even in larger organizations. You just have more people.

Joe Toste [00:23:09]:
Yeah. So I wanted to jump in. I think I had a chance to see a glance at this.

Joe Toste [00:23:12]:
But going back to setting the quarterly goals, you have a smart sheet.

Joe Toste [00:23:18]:
Could you maybe just talk about.

Joe Toste [00:23:19]:
I know we're not going to show.

Joe Toste [00:23:21]:
It up here on the podcast, but could you just talk about the smart sheet, how it's set up? I know you've got the green, the yellow, the red. But just, I think diving deeper on that productivity and alignment piece that has.

Joe Toste [00:23:35]:
Been so successful, transferring to the county of Santa Barbara.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:23:39]:
Yeah. So we started off by asking everybody.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:23:43]:
To think about what is three to five.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:23:46]:
So no less than three, no more.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:23:48]:
Than five annual goals.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:23:51]:
And those annual goals have to align a with our core values. They also have to align with our major strategies that we're trying to accomplish. And so you can't have a goal that's out of alignment.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:03]:
Right.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:03]:
So that's, number one, it's got to.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:06]:
Align with those things.

Joe Toste [00:24:09]:
Then.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:09]:
Secondly, once they've defined those three to five annual goals, then break those goals into smaller chunks.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:14]:
And so maybe an annual goal is I want to spend 100 hours that year in technical training.

Joe Toste [00:24:25]:
Right.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:25]:
And so each quarter you're doing 25 hours.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:28]:
Right.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:29]:
And so the, what we do is, so we've got our annual goals. We've got our quarterly goals listed. And we have. Yeah, it's a green, yellow, red.

Joe Toste [00:24:37]:
It's.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:37]:
Green means on track.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:39]:
Yellow means I'm a little behind. Red means I'm way behind. I'm at risk of not accomplishing this goal.

Joe Toste [00:24:44]:
Right.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:24:45]:
And then when a goal is completed, we mark it as a status of completed. And we set our quarterly goals one quarter in advance is usually how we do it. And then we track those in our monthly meetings. How are we doing on our goals?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:00]:
And each team is responsible for updating.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:03]:
And so that's really the gist of it. It's not overly complicated.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:06]:
The key part of it goes back to what I said earlier, visibility.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:11]:
Every single person on the team can see my goals, I can see their.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:15]:
Goals, and at any moment, we can.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:17]:
Go in open up Smartsheet and see how everybody's doing. And then we review it as a team as well, I should say, as a leadership team.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:25]:
We spend time going through it.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:28]:
The accountability is there, the transparency is there.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:31]:
And that accountability really does get people.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:36]:
To, I got to get my goals done because mine are red and everybody else on my team is green.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:40]:
And so there's a little bit of.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:43]:
Good peer pressure there.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:44]:
And the goals can't be something that they would have done as part of.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:49]:
Their just normal day to day job anyway. If your job is to monitor firewall logs, you can't say, I'm going to spend 6 hours monitoring firewall logs.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:59]:
That's my goal.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:25:59]:
No, it has to be above and.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:26:01]:
Beyond what you would normally do in your day to day operations. So maybe it's achieving some kind of technical certification, right?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:26:10]:
Or maybe it's a process issue. You want to improve a process to save time, an automation, you go down the list. But it can be anything that is just outside of what you would normally do on a day to day your job.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:26:25]:
And so at the end of the.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:26:28]:
Year, what's amazing is looking back and I can tell you we're going to have accomplished well over 500 goals. That is moving the needle significantly within our department and ultimately across the county.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:26:40]:
Those 500 things I can tell you.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:26:42]:
Probably would not have been done if we wouldn't have gone through this exercise.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:26:46]:
And it creates a culture, too, of accountability.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:26:50]:
It creates a culture of achievement. The team gets excited when they achieve their goals. And you mentioned something earlier that I.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:26:58]:
Think is so important.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:26:59]:
When you create a culture, a really strong culture, where people are excited to come to work, excited to be part.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:27:07]:
Of a team, it attracts others that want to be part of that team. And we have seen over the last.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:27:17]:
Twelve to 18 months, we have seen the number of applications for our open positions.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:27:22]:
They've gone up two to three x what they were twelve to 18 months ago.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:27:28]:
And a lot of the applicants are from other departments in the county that want to come work in central it because they hear about what we're doing.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:27:36]:
And how the team works well together.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:27:39]:
And just the culture that we've built. And so that's been a huge benefit.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:27:43]:
Is we've seen the applicant pool just.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:27:46]:
Skyrocket for our open positions. We just advertised for a business relationship manager, and that role is going to be focused on meeting with all the.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:27:57]:
Departments, listening to what their needs are.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:28:00]:
Building relationships, following through on what those needs are going to be, really becoming a liaison or account manager for those departments that reports back to it. And I think we floated that position and I can't remember the exact number, but I believe it was like 60 to 70 applicants for that one position.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:28:19]:
And it was like, just fantastic to.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:28:21]:
Have such a large number for a role like that. So a good culture will definitely foster others that are like minded, that want.

Joe Toste [00:28:31]:
To be part of that.

Joe Toste [00:28:32]:
Yeah, there's no better sales. I think it's like, there's no better sales than your customers going to other people and talking about it. And it's the same thing for recruiting, even in the public sector.

Joe Toste [00:28:46]:
I think the most underrated piece is the folks who are already on your team saying, hey, this is an awesome place to work, we should go work here. And it's a tough sell when people don't want to go to work and.

Joe Toste [00:29:00]:
You'Re trying to recruit.

Joe Toste [00:29:01]:
You can hire a recruiting manager, you hire all kinds of people, but if.

Joe Toste [00:29:05]:
The culture is not a place where.

Joe Toste [00:29:07]:
People want to go, that can be a tough sell.

Joe Toste [00:29:10]:
That's pretty awesome. The 60 to 70 people applying, that's pretty cool. I believe just on past conversations, I.

Joe Toste [00:29:18]:
Was thinking about the layout.

Joe Toste [00:29:19]:
Is the county a hybrid model? It's not fully in person, right, or.

Joe Toste [00:29:24]:
Fully remote or anything?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:29:25]:
Oh, yeah.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:29:26]:
In terms of our workforce, each department has the authority to dictate whether it's all in person or hybrid. So here within it, we have a hybrid environment. I would say the majority of our team does work from home full time, and the other maybe 30% to 40% either are on site because they're support technicians that have to go around to departments and hands on type work.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:29:53]:
So they're here.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:29:54]:
And several members of our team have kind of some days from home, some days from the office. And so it's a mix. But I'm a huge supporter of remote work. I think that a, if you have the right, again, it goes back to the right culture, which it entices the.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:30:10]:
Right people to come work there.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:30:12]:
You empower your people by giving them clarity of their responsibility, by giving them a vision of what they're to accomplish. You're holding them accountable to their roles.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:30:26]:
And then you let them do their job.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:30:29]:
Right. No one wants to be micromanaged, no one wants somebody watching over their shoulders. But I believe if you have the right people with clarity around what they're supposed to do, and again, accountability and visibility, you're going to get the best out of people. And that's what we're seeing. And so I'm seeing our team accomplish a tremendous amount and work really hard, even though they're not here in the office.

Joe Toste [00:30:52]:
I love that I'm teeing this up at the risk that I'm going to get some big slack if someone listens to this. But the person I'm thinking about is Terry in Ventura. From past conversations, I know Terry is. He's an in person kind of guy. I love in person, too, but he's 100% in person. Have you tried to recruit against the county of Ventura? Has I crossed your mind yet?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:31:16]:
Terry's not watching. We've actually had a couple of county of Ventura employees apply here. I've seen that. No, Terry is a fantastic leader, and you're right. Everybody, I think, has their viewpoint on this, and there's certain leaders that just really prefer that face to face in person. And I get that it's really hard to replace that face to face interaction. But I think that what I've seen work well is that hybrid workforce. And as long as you're having regular.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:31:48]:
Communication again, that accountability, that clarity of.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:31:52]:
Responsibilities, all those things. And the culture, a lot of it goes back to the culture you can.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:31:57]:
Make it work in, both in person or remote.

Joe Toste [00:32:01]:
If Terry listens to this podcast, and I'm going to put it at a low probability because he's a busy guy, but if Terry listens to this podcast.

Joe Toste [00:32:08]:
Terry, hear me out.

Joe Toste [00:32:10]:
I will drink a 711 cup of coffee if you listen. Maybe a couple of sips. Maybe I'll drink a couple of that. That's the inside joke, no? Yeah. Terry's a great guy. I love the energy and passion he brings. And I go to Kiva every day except when I'm recording. So I love the in person piece.

Joe Toste [00:32:29]:
I'm just wired that way.

Joe Toste [00:32:31]:
I love the human connection, which is.

Joe Toste [00:32:33]:
A ton of fun.

Joe Toste [00:32:34]:
Chris, let's jump to the technology modernization. When I was reading the story, you mentioned it earlier, you had a bunch of 20 something divisions have now folding under central. It's been 18 months. Love to hear any either recent projects or initiatives at the county that you're.

Joe Toste [00:32:51]:
Proud about and that you would love to share.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:32:53]:
Yeah, there's no shortage of initiatives happening right now. We are in the process of implementing a new ERP system. We're going with workday here for both financials and the human resources software. So that is a significant undertaking that we're in the middle of right now. We are doing a really good job of, I would say. I don't want to call it centralizing, but we're really starting to consolidate a lot of the GIS resources around the county. And whereas previously every department was doing their own thing when it came to GIS, we've recently implemented Esri Enterprise. We are starting to do a lot more collaboration sharing within ESRI.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:33:39]:
And another thing I'm really excited about is we've created an external GIS working group that now we're bringing in city GIS staff, where cities from all around the county, even other counties, are starting to participate in our external GIS working group so that we can all collaborate much more effectively from a GIS standpoint. So that's something else we're in the middle of. We're modernizing our public safety radio network right now. So we have a 60 million project to go from analog to digital, replacing.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:34:12]:
Our wireless towers and putting in a.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:34:15]:
Whole new dispatch center. And I could go on and on. I think we have over 40 active, sizable it projects happening right now at the county. And so it's a challenge. It's a challenge to try to juggle all of these projects with the resources that we have, but the team is doing a really good job. Equally as important to all of that, though, is governance.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:34:38]:
And when I came in here, as.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:34:40]:
I mentioned, there was no standalone IT department, there was no CIO, and there.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:34:44]:
Was some governance, but we really needed to elevate that.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:34:49]:
And so we're working aggressively on standards.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:34:52]:
And policies and figuring out more effective.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:34:57]:
Ways on prioritizing IT initiatives and just all those things that come along with best practices when it comes to governance.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:35:06]:
And so we're making some good strides there.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:35:08]:
We still got a ways to go.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:35:10]:
But we're in a much better place.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:35:11]:
Now than we were 18 months ago. So those are some of the things that we're doing that just come top of mind. We're in it for the long haul. These things, there's no finish line when it comes to modernization. AI right now, as we've talked about before, is a front and center when it comes to looking at how we.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:35:32]:
Can implement this safely and effectively within the county here. So we've created an AI working group to explore that. So, yeah, there's just a lot happening.

Joe Toste [00:35:43]:
Just to touch on the AI front and centerpiece. Any specific use cases that you're pumped about for the county?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:35:53]:
There's certain technologies that we've already implemented that are using AI, such as some of our cybersecurity products use AI today already, even though we haven't gone live with workday, there's AI built into workday. We're starting to see more and more of the applications we use AI, but I think the biggest game changer for us is going to be when we implement some of the AI solutions from Microsoft, Copilot and some of the things around Azure, that type of thing, we haven't implemented those yet. It's not to say that our end users can't go to Bing today and go to copilot through Bing and use that. So we've just got to make sure that, again, we have safeguards there that our staff is educated and informed and realize that today if they go to copilot, any data they put into copilot is public domain.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:36:50]:
And so the awareness of using those tools properly.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:36:55]:
But it's really not a lot different than how we use email today or.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:37:00]:
We'Ve got to protect confidential data.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:37:04]:
And so whether it's AI or email.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:37:06]:
Or any other system, it's really about educating and training our workforce.

Joe Toste [00:37:12]:
Yeah, I think you nailed it with.

Joe Toste [00:37:15]:
The governance piece and I think once that's set up and it'll be exciting to see the big unlock with all.

Joe Toste [00:37:23]:
Of the data that the county is collecting. I think I mentioned this offline earlier.

Joe Toste [00:37:28]:
But on the podcast front, the big unlock is accessing every transcript from 170.

Joe Toste [00:37:35]:
Plus episodes and podcast intro calls and any conversation and just pulling up insights that you would just be buried. And yeah, it's be a big unlock.

Joe Toste [00:37:47]:
So we'll have to have you come back on in a year or two and see the updates on maybe an AI specific front.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:37:56]:
Yeah, we're still in just the infancy stages of AI and a lot ahead of us, but it's exciting. I think if used effectively, I think it can really create a tremendous amount of efficiencies here and make us more.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:38:10]:
Productive at our day to day jobs.

Joe Toste [00:38:13]:
The use cases are great. I love our friend said it earlier, emerging technologies. It's going to be a big unlock. I've already just thinking between spreadsheets and it's just so many cool things. But yeah, I got to get that governance piece you mentioned earlier about collaboration, which I think was such a great.

Joe Toste [00:38:32]:
Segue to the next question.

Joe Toste [00:38:35]:
Collaborating across different departments and the community is key to success. What are two to three learnings that.

Joe Toste [00:38:41]:
You'D love to share with your county.

Joe Toste [00:38:44]:
Peers across the US, with having to.

Joe Toste [00:38:46]:
Collaborate with the different departments and divisions in the community? Yeah.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:38:51]:
So I think it really just boils down to relationships. So when I first joined the county, the very first thing I did was.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:38:59]:
Go around and meet with all the.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:39:01]:
Leadership at the county in one on one or small group type meetings, and.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:39:06]:
You really just have to ask questions.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:39:08]:
And be an active listener, really hear what their frustrations are, what their needs are, what are their pain points, and truly understand that. And then what's important to build that trust is the follow through, right? That you didn't just come and listen and walk away and they never heard from you again.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:39:25]:
But the follow through where you come.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:39:27]:
Back and you say, hey, I've been thinking about this and here's some ideas, or here's what my team is going to start to focus on, or here's how we can help you meet their goals and objectives. Started off here at the county doing a lot of that, and that has been really beneficial to build that trust. But now what we're doing is more formalizing that because it's not something that I can go do every single month.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:39:54]:
There's just don't have enough time in the day to do that.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:39:56]:
So what we're doing is I've formed a couple of new positions within our IT department. So we have a services delivery manager who is responsible for ensuring that those relationships are strong with departments and with it. And the we're also hiring business relationship.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:40:15]:
Managers, as I mentioned earlier, and BRM for short.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:40:20]:
But those BRMs are critical to the success of our relationship with departments. And it, they're out there every single month having meetings with the departments again, just getting to understand the departments and their needs and the goals and all of that, and being the point person, being that account manager or that liaison. So establishing regular monthly meetings with departments and our BRMs is critical to our.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:40:50]:
Success, because what that does is, a.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:40:53]:
It creates trust, b, it just strengthens the collaboration that you were talking about. And we're able to really better understand the needs of those departments because at the end of the day, our job is to serve those departments. Our job is to make their lives better and their lives easier. And so if we can do that.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:41:15]:
Then that does create that strong collaboration and makes us just more effective at.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:41:20]:
Serving the departments, which ultimately, at the end of the day, improves service for the constituents. So that's a more formal process that.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:41:28]:
We'Re in the process of implementing right now.

Joe Toste [00:41:32]:
That is fantastic.

Joe Toste [00:41:33]:
I know we're up on our time, so I'm going to skip down to the mailbag.

Joe Toste [00:41:38]:
We're going to bring it back. We're going to bring it back. We've got three quick questions. It's a little bit of a cheat just because you've heard them already before, earlier today, but we'll kick off with JR Sloan, CIO for the state of.

Joe Toste [00:41:53]:
Arizona, asks, what was your perception coming.

Joe Toste [00:41:57]:
Into the public sector and what surprised.

Joe Toste [00:42:00]:
You most since you got in?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:42:02]:
I think it's a fairly common perception that I'll just say that a government.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:42:10]:
Employee at any level comes in, just.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:42:13]:
Does their job and goes home type of a thing. They don't go above and beyond that type of thing. It's a misperception, but that's a common perception out there. I can tell you that the staff here, they are incredible.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:42:27]:
They are mission driven.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:42:29]:
They care about their community. They want to make a difference. They work hard. Anytime we have to activate our emergency.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:42:38]:
Operations center, they're there to come in and support in the middle of the.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:42:42]:
Night or whatever it is. And so I've just been really impressed.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:42:46]:
By the level of commitment, the level.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:42:50]:
Of energy and the work ethic by the team here. We've got some really talented, really hardworking people that want to make a difference. And so I love coming to work shoulder to shoulder with this team and seeing the great things that they're doing.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:43:06]:
They truly care about our community.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:43:10]:
At the end of the day, that's what I've seen.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:43:12]:
And so that's been really exciting.

Joe Toste [00:43:14]:
I love that. And just going all the way back.

Joe Toste [00:43:16]:
To the beginning of the episode, I.

Joe Toste [00:43:18]:
Love the phrase building a lot.

Joe Toste [00:43:20]:
So I love what you're building with the county. Rich McKimgey, the CIO for the Las.

Joe Toste [00:43:26]:
Vegas Harry Reid airport, asks, what's the one thing your team is teaching you.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:43:32]:
To be a good listener? I really think that the team has a tremendous amount of valuable insight. They've got ideas.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:43:41]:
They have a lot of wisdom when.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:43:44]:
It comes to how we can do things better and how we can serve departments and our constituents better.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:43:50]:
And they needed someone to really listen.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:43:55]:
To their ideas and then again implement.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:43:58]:
Or follow through on that.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:44:00]:
Right. That's where the trust is built, is when they feel that their voices were heard and then their ideas were actually implemented, and they can see the success of that, no matter how small it is. Right. It might be just a tiny little idea, but if they see that in.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:44:17]:
Action, they're proud, right?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:44:19]:
They're proud that they've made an impact. And so I would say that just truly actively listening and then implementing ideas has gone a long way.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:44:29]:
So I've learned a lot from the team there.

Joe Toste [00:44:31]:
That's great. That's like the best way to show you care, to take action.

Joe Toste [00:44:35]:
I love that. And Lynn Furlin, the CIO for San.

Joe Toste [00:44:39]:
Bernardino county, asks, how is Chris, tackling.

Joe Toste [00:44:42]:
Procurement purchasing issues or the show process.

Joe Toste [00:44:45]:
In the government role and making procurement.

Joe Toste [00:44:49]:
More responsive and to deliver IT services. With your background being an entrepreneur and now having to procure through the government.

Joe Toste [00:44:56]:
Process, how have you worked with local.

Joe Toste [00:44:58]:
Government to streamline the technology purchases?

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:45:01]:
Yes, prior to 18 months ago, I didn't have as much silver hair as I do now.

Joe Toste [00:45:08]:
You got silver hair. We want to see it.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:45:10]:
Procurement is a challenge, and we'll probably have to do a second episode on that issue alone. We still have a lot of work to do.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:45:18]:
To be honest with you, Joe, that.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:45:19]:
Is an area that I have just not had the time to really address. There's a lot of room for, I would say innovation and improvement there, but it's still to be tackled.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:45:31]:
I'll have to come back to you.

Joe Toste [00:45:33]:
On that one, okay.

Joe Toste [00:45:34]:
Because Lynn says he wants the blueprint. So once you master that, please send it over.

Joe Toste [00:45:40]:
Final question, next, two to three CIOs.

Joe Toste [00:45:44]:
That you'd love to hear on tech.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:45:46]:
Tables next, I'll tell you that we've.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:45:48]:
Got some great CIOs in our region. You mentioned Terry Thielbald already. I think he'd be fantastic. Daniel Malay, the CIO for the county of San Luis Obispo, another just a tremendous leader. Those two, I think of often, I think, recently met Josh Bright, the CIO for UCSB, another dynamic leader.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:46:09]:
Very sharp.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:46:10]:
And I think he'd be another one.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:46:12]:
That would be a great speaker on this. So those three are the first that come to mind.

Joe Toste [00:46:17]:
Chris, this is an absolute pleasure, and I'd be remiss if I couldn't plug the 2024 Phoenix live podcast tour. Super excited. April 1 to the third. If you haven't checked that out, head to techtables.com. Chris is coming back on the podcast with.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:46:32]:
Looking forward to it.

Joe Toste [00:46:33]:
Yeah, live. This is going to be a ton.

Joe Toste [00:46:35]:
Of fun with Richard McCatty, who's the.

Joe Toste [00:46:38]:
CIO for Maricopa County.

Joe Toste [00:46:40]:
Maricopa county is the second largest county in the US.

Joe Toste [00:46:42]:
We're going to have a ton of fun in techtables fashion, and it is during the final four. It is going to be a ton of fun.

Joe Toste [00:46:48]:
The state's going to be hopping details.

Joe Toste [00:46:50]:
In the show notes. Again, thank you to my guest for.

Joe Toste [00:46:53]:
Coming on the pod.

Chris Chirgwin, CIO, Santa Barbara County [00:46:54]:
Thank you. Appreciate it.

Joe Toste [00:46:55]:
Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Joe Tofki from Techtables.com, and you're listening to the public sector show by Techtables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector, CIOs, CISOs and tech technology leaders across federal, state, city, county and higher education. You'll gain valuable insights into current issues and challenges faced by top leaders through interviews, speaking engagements, live podcast tour events. We offer you a behind the mic look at the opportunities top leaders are seeing today. And to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Spotify and Apple podcasts and hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves.