Keeping true to her agenda, chair of Customer Impact Committee (CIC) Jody Lusby, is making great progress on achieving her goal to increase committee participation. Lusby, who was recently reappointed to a second yearlong term as chair, is the assistant director of administrative services at the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
The CIC works closely with FI$Cal as a leadership group to provide a formal mechanism for agencies/state entities to express their views and concerns at the executive level to FI$Cal management and the FI$Cal Steering Committee.
After hosting two successful “Lessons Learned/Best Practices” forums attended by FI$Cal end users to share lessons learned or efficiencies realized during the FI$Cal implementation, Lusby wanted to do more to keep the conversation going.
“My main goal is to get more departments engaged and communicating with each other. We have 151 departments in the system and we have 151 silos,” Lusby said, “But if we can have departments working together and sharing their ideas, we can find efficiencies and solutions that can help everyone.”
By the end of 2021, Lusby successfully facilitated expanding the CIC membership adding representatives from 15 departments. Originally, the members of the committee were limited to administrative deputy secretaries at the agency level. While the voting membership will stay the same, the additional representation allows the committee to expand discussions to include departments that represent both small and large organizations.
The expanded membership has been formally recognized by the CIC and has been documented in the CIC charter located on the CIC page of the FI$Cal website as well as the CIC membership roster.
As CIC chair, Lusby is committed to creating a format for increased communication and collaboration for departments to engage with one another and share issues as well as solutions so that the FI$Cal system continues to evolve with the needs of its customers.
Please note: the CIC hosted its third Lessons Learned/Best Practices forum on January 19, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. All departments are encouraged to participate in these sessions and bring their questions, ideas, solutions, and input. The more participants we have, the more cross-department sharing can be done.
If you are interested in participating in the future, please email Karuna.Sharma@fiscal.ca.gov.