1. Public safety is the number one objective of the California Department of Corrections
and Rehabilitation (CDCR), one of the largest government correctional institutions in the
country. With approximately 50,000 employees and 245,000+ inmates and parolees, it
was evident to CDCR’s Director, Enterprise Information Services (EIS), Joe Panora that the
EIS team could be central to supporting this mission.
Panora recognized early that an Enterprise Architecture (EA) could convert the
Department’s IT investment into a strategic differentiator. He embarked on an EA program
using Troux and is already seeing positive returns. CDCR is benefiting from accelerated
decision-making based on real-time data linked to the Department’s objectives and new
initiatives that reduce spending, minimize risk, and maximize agility.
Not Business as Usual
The State of California, like many governments around the world, has been financially
disadvantaged for some time due to State budgetary constraints. As California’s largest
State department, CDCR is continually under pressure to streamline operations and more
tightly control costs.
This made it even more challenging for Panora to manage the consolidation of multiple
departments in the mid-2000s. The EIS team found itself governing and managing
terabytes of data as well as a complex array of hardware and software with few enterprise
procedures and a lack of enterprise-defined technology standards.
Siloed business programs across CDCR were duplicating efforts and expanding platforms
and applications based on local requirements. Inaccurate, redundant or partial data led
to inconsistent answers to ad hoc questions, and stymied project modeling and quality
assurance. Lack of a structured hardware and software inventory hindered effective cost
analysis and planning for consolidation, reuse or retirement.
Panora knew there had to be a better way. “We needed to take a hard look at our environment and create a baseline,” said Panora. “We
had to get our hands around what we were inheriting from the departmental consolidation and what we needed to support. That was the
impetus to move forward, put a framework around this, and adopt a true Enterprise Architecture program for managing our IT assets.”
That’s when Caroline Bigelow, Chief Enterprise Architect, partnered with Troux to expand EA into a mature strategic program.
“EA needed a tool that allowed CDCR to strategically align IT investments with business strategies and functions, exposing new
opportunities for CDCR,” Bigelow explained. Her goal was to have the CDCR EA Program recognized for strategic leadership.
EIS has taken steps to operationalize and roll out strategic IT and business initiatives using Troux tools, and the implementation has
already yielded impressive benefits.
BY THE NUMBERS
Adults: 245,000+ offenders, in
prison and on parole
Facilities: 33 adult institutions,
40 camps, 5 prisoner mother
facilities
Youth: 1,000+ juvenile offenders
in 3 youth correctional facilities
and 1 camp
Staff: Approximately 50,000
employees
Budget: $9.25 billion
CASE STUDY
California Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation
CDCR uses Troux to Reduce Complexity, Control Costs
and Speed Decision-Making
CDCR: Troux Case Study • Page 1
2. Setting Standards
First, the EIS EA program established a common set of
technology standards for personal computing.
“Troux standard reports enabled us to mature past tools
such as PowerPoint and Word, allowing more efficient and
effective architecture analysis and enterprise communication,”
said Judith Christensen, EA Program Lead. “Today we have
standards established and we are retiring and migrating legacy
hardware and software technologies out of our environment.”
Currently, standards have expanded to all areas of IT including
network, infrastructure, telecommunications, applications
and databases. The ability to directly influence and achieve
standards compliance has led to significant progress,
explained Ray Roa, Enterprise Technical Architect. “As a
result of being able to steer to standards, we are achieving at
least 80% adherence to current standards,” said Roa. “The
ability to publish a catalog streamlines the process and makes
compliance much more efficient, which saves time and money.”
“These major initiatives have fiscal implications for the
Department,” added Panora. “The real-time analysis that we
gather using Troux tools allows us to improve our procurement
processes – as IT can more accurately map out life cycles for
its assets – and as a result, be more accurate in our budget
forecasting.”
Application Consolidation
CDCR’s application portfolio was another area targeted for improvement. CDCR programs often created one-off applications to satisfy
local requirements. EIS recognized that by using the capabilities provided by Troux, they could identify application redundancies,
retire non-essential applications and create a centralized pool of solutions that could be re-used across the Department.
“With Troux, CDCR was able to identify opportunities for
improvement such as the consolidation of nine disparate
mission-critical applications into four existing enterprise
solutions, avoiding wasted effort and resources, said Bigelow.
“The EA team is also using Troux to analyze an additional 55
systems for consolidation or retirement opportunities, moving
CDCR closer to its future architecture state.”
CDCR: Troux Case Study • Page 2
3. Going forward, CDCR is able to prevent the implementation
of redundant applications using Troux capabilities to align the
Department’s business functions to existing solutions.
“Now that we have fewer one-off technologies and applications,
our support staff is more efficient and can respond to more
requests because they already have the skill set,” said Panora.
“We can now focus on training our IT staff for new technologies,
brought as a result of new projects, which makes them more
valuable. Our time to market with enterprise solutions is now
dramatically reduced – we are able to realize solutions much
faster for the business.”
Speaking the Same Language
CDCR is maturing its Enterprise Data Dictionary utilizing Troux’s
Information product module.
“Information is key to any organization but is especially
important when dealing with public safety,” explained Ed Wiebe,
Enterprise Data Architect. “Using Troux, CDCR will be able to
integrate data elements with other architecture components,
providing huge analysis benefits when analyzing CDCR’s data
landscape.”
Classifying data and governing its use provides the basis for
proper security controls and enables CDCR data stewards to
better understand and share information — ultimately improving
Departmental decisions. EA has populated the enterprise data
dictionary with over 8,000 unique data elements from core
Departmental applications.
State Leadership
CDCR stands out as a leader in strategic information technology (IT) planning. In today’s economy, where government is challenged
with broad mandates and growing budget deficits, it is clear that a well-executed Enterprise Architect (EA) program which delivers
transparency and tightly aligns IT to the business is fundamental to maintaining high quality and cost-efficient service delivery.
Driven by fiscal, operational, and technological necessity, CDCR established an EA strategy to analyze and make better decisions
across a wide range of operational and transformational initiatives. With implementation of CDCR’s EA strategy underway, they are in
the process of sharing their approach of leveraging EA to maximize strategic planning and operations with other State agencies.
CDCR: Troux Case Study • Page 3
