California Department of Technology

Bottom line

The California Department of Technology (CDT) runs Poppy, the state’s own generative AI platform for state staff.
Chris Given moved from GovOps to CDT as Director on April 29, 2026 (Governor appointments 2026-04-29 (web)).

Why they matter

Poppy is a public sector platform “built by state staff for state staff”. Its pilot started in Sept. 2025 with more than 2,800 employees in 67 departments (Poppy overview; Poppy service page).
Its request process needs approval by the agency’s information officer and a user list (Poppy service page).
Poppy runs on “CDT-managed cloud” but sends queries to commercial models. This tests what “A fully owned and hosted cloud platform” means (Poppy service page).
The Governor appointed Ayushi Roy State Chief Technology Officer on Aug. 19, 2026 (Governor appointments 2026-08-19). She designed IT systems for public benefits at New America. Chris Given names “legacy-system modernization, digital identity and artificial intelligence” as early priorities (StateScoop California CTO Ayushi Roy).
CDT oversees “statewide IT strategic planning, project delivery, procurement, policy and standards, and enterprise architecture”. It is “Home to the State Data Center”, and its Director is the State CIO (CDT About the Department).
Its Training & Education Center runs IT leadership academies and a “GenAI Boot Camp” for public sector staff (CDT workforce development). Its AI community of practice meets about every two months, with UC speakers (CDT AI community of practice).
State IT jobs map to a few classifications, Information Technology Technician to Manager II. “Machine Learning Engineer” and “Cloud Architect” are state titles (CDT IT Classification Mapping; CDT career opportunities).
CDT’s new SITeS portal offers Anthropic’s Claude to state agencies (GovOps more efficient California).

Affiliations

Government Operations Agency: CDT is one of the 16 state departments and offices under its “direct responsibility” (GovOps homepage).

Sources

Publisher of 10 sources in this library.

Source file: wiki/entities/California Department of Technology.md, updated 2026-10-30.