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IT Vendor Forum: Who Will Be There? What Projects Will They Talk About?

The IT Vendor Forum is just over a week away. We’ve got NEW information available about who will be in attendance and what are some of the projects they will be talking about. This is a chance for technology contractors who are interested in doing business with the City of Seattle and/or King County to come meet with the managers who are responsible for guiding the most important technology projects.

This year’s forum takes place at Seattle City Hall on Thursday, April 26 in the Bertha Knight Landes Room. We’ve broken this year’s event into two identical sessions. Click the hyperlink to register.

A morning session takes place from 9 a.m. to noon (nearly full)

An afternoon session takes place from 1 – 4 p.m. (openings available)

Also, for the first time this year, we are featuring a networking hour in between the two main sessions from noon to 1 p.m. Morning session attendees can stay after and afternoon session attendees can come before to meet with other contractors and experts in the field.

Below you will find a list of the categories that will be available for you to speak with technology experts on. Please, direct any questions or concerns to Rosalind Brazel, Ram Biyani, and Gina Simmons.

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

City of Seattle

Business Office and Industry Solutions

Provides the business services that enable the successful operation of the department including Budget and Finance, Accounting, Human Resources, Communications, Contracting and Procurement, and Performance Management. Representing this division will be members of the Purchasing and Contracts team listed below.

Who: Rosalind Brazel from the Communications team will be in attendance to speak with graphic designers about upcoming public outreach projects.

Digital/Community Engagement

Develops and supports partnerships, programs, and policies that increase access to digital information and services for all Seattle residents, especially those who are historically underserved. The Cable Office, Civic Technology, Community Technology, Digital Services, Open Data, Privacy Program, and the Seattle Channel.

Who: Director of Digital Services Jim Loter and Michal Perlstein who heads the Digital Services team will attend.

Security, Risk & Compliance

Balance safeguarding the City’s assets, infrastructure, and the information entrusted to the City with the City’s commitment to openness, transparency, equity, and innovation.

Who: Mike Evans and Kevin Murphy will talk about current and projected projects including NIST Cybersecurity Framework, Cloud Security, and Security Orchestration and Automation.

Strategy & Planning and New Tech Trends

Facilitates the strategy for technology in the City, with a heavy emphasis on governance and setting the standard for IT program and project management. This division is breaks down into several teams including Project Management, Portfolio Management, Project Quality, Enterprise Architecture, and Service Management.

Who: Project Portfolio Manager Steve Lavender. His team is working on a Source Control Records Digitization, a Maximo 7.6 Upgrade, and a Drainage Inspection App.

Engineering and Ops/Emergency Communications and Real-time Data Management

Comprised of four teams including Computer System Technology, IT Operations Support, End User Input, and Network and Communications Technologies.

Who: This division will be represented by Division Director Bill Norris, as well as his four managers, Jim Bachesta, Mark Schmidt, Bruce Hills, and Ken Conradi. Some of the projects they are working on include the UC project, currently accepting RFPs. Also, an ADMS project, MDM, Coban, and an SQL server upgrade are in flight.

Applications and Intelligent Operations

Designs, develops, integrates, implements, and supports application solutions in accordance with Citywide architecture and governance.

Who: Tara Duckworth who leads the division, Wil Yuen, Senior Applications Manager over the Shared Platforms team, Debbie Montgomery who oversees the applications team, and Jeffery Stewart who heads the Cross Platform Services. Some of the project technologies used in this division include Tableau, PowerBI, SPO, and Dynamics.

Purchasing/Contracts

Seattle IT’s Contracting and Procurement team, consisting of Ram Biyani, Jeremy Doane, Laura Park, Mike Nowlin, La-Gina Simmons, and Don Berhend manages and administers contracts and authorizes bids, requests for proposals, requests for quotations, and issues contacts. This entire team will be on hand to help interested organizations and companies register to do business with the City of Seattle.

 

King County

King County is looking for innovative solutions to help efficiently transform and modernize the delivery of government services. 

The County is looking for more information and innovative solutions in the following categories:

Industry solutions

Engineering is focused on net new development and innovative solutions especially in the areas of Transportation, Health and Human Services, and Recreation.  DevOps is also an area of focus. King County prefers buy versus build for solutions. Where the County does build their own, the focus is on modular application designs and modern integration methodologies.

  • MOBILITY: Free residents and employees to interact and transact business when and where most appropriate and convenient.
  • DEVOPS: Delivering faster, with increased quality and efficiency, using the latest tools, technology and processes.
  • DATA: Real-time data management is integral and an area of focus. Data areas of focus include: open data portals, geo-spatial attributes, data management and governance. Enterprise architecture and governance are in place.
  • Skills/Products the County is looking for: Transportation Solutions, Health Solutions, Human Services Solutions, any innovative solutions that address challenges facing King County’s wide breadth of agencies and services.

King County Staff in attendance: Aaron Barak – Chief Technology Officer; –   Bill Yock – Chief Data Officer; Dennis Fong – Dev/Ops Manager

Digital / Community Engagement  

Design and Civic Engagement connects with customers in the digital channels they love and live in – whether it’s KingCounty.gov, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others – while keeping the customer experience personalized and integrated into the King County experience that is familiar to our customers.  Equity is an important factor in ensuring all members of the community are connected to King County and services.

King County Staff Members in attendance: Ruoxi Zhang  /  Nicole Franklin

Cybersecurity, Risk and Compliance

  • IT Security Risk is focused on IT security risk and compliance, digital forensics and business continuity.
  • IT SECURITY RISK: ISRC identifies risks through IT security risk assessments, IT security audits and penetration testing. We work across King County departments to address Information Security risks and ensure regulatory compliance for HIPAA, PCI and CJIS.
  • DIGITAL FORENSICS: Forensics perform internal digital investigations and facilitate outsourced digital investigations within the King County offices.
  • BUSINESS CONTINUITY: IT Enterprise Business Continuity Program, planning and preparation to ensure Essential Services can continue to operate in the event of a natural or man-made disaster. This program Includes contingency planning, recovery, and resiliency.

King County staff in attendance: Elise McConnell

Vendor Skills/Products we are looking for at the Vendor Forum:

  • Basic on-line security training for all King County employees. In addition to basic Security training, we will be looking for HIPAA, PCI and CJIS on-line training modules.
  • IT audit tools and services for PCI, HIPAA, CJIS, other general audit.
  • Penetration testing for web-based applications, new IT implementations
  • IT security risk management tools and frameworks
  • Business continuity
  • Digital forensics tools and services
  • New Technology Trends
  • Innovation Center of Excellence is focused utilizing emerging technology to pilot in King County to solve current business problems.  There are currently 8 pilots underway.
  • Skills/Products the County is looking for include: IoT, AI and Machine Learning, Augmented/Mixed/Virtual Reality, Conversational Platforms, Drones.

King County staff in attendance: John Klein, Bob Potts, Darrel Hunt, Tommy Lee, Sandra Valdivia – Platform Services Manager

Engineering and Operations

Infrastructure engineering designs and architects new technology solutions. Responsible for IT strategy, standards, and roadmaps. Production Operations is focused on the delivery of compute platform environments, with monitoring and management of hardware and system software configurations, deployment, network management, and storage.

King County staff in attendance: Temujin Baker – Infrastructure Engineering Service Owner / Manager / Manager

Applications

Modernizing legacy systems or implementing new applications into a cloud environment is the focus.  The approach taken emphasizes the use of next-generation technology, focus on customer experience and acceleration of business outcomes.

  • MODERNIZATION: Modernization includes streamlining business processes, interfaces, systems and functionality to deliver quality and speed. Services include convert old programming language code to modern programming languages such as C# or Java for easier & less costly maintenance.
  • MICROSERVICES: Microservices and support for containers to deliver digital interfaces to connect applications and platforms.
  • TESTING AND DIGITAL ASSURANCE: Software quality assurance end to end testing enables release of secure, quality applications quickly and cost effectively, ensuring our King County customers enjoy a great experience from the first time they use the application. Performance testing is critical to ensure success.

King County staff in attendance: Stephen Heard – Software Engineering Manager; Brent Veenstra – Manager of Cloud/Mobile Development; Michael Tu – Software Quality Assurance Manager; Wyatt Yee – Application Development Manager