If anything has ever come close to defeating Ted Ross, it was probably payroll.
The 10-year veteran CIO for Los Angeles, Ross last year shepherded to completion an upgrade of the city’s payroll technology, replacing a creaky 24-year-old legacy system with one based on Workday software that can more easily merge relevant data for the city’s more than 50,000 employees.
The work lasted more than two years and faced harsh criticism over costs and schedules. Now, he says, the system is 99 percent accurate and artificial intelligence tools help the city with hiring — a major challenge for most public-sector IT operations.
“It was a ton of work, a ton of effort, a lot of conversations and handholding,” says Ross, 48. “It was easily the hardest project of my life.” Even so, the project served as a reminder that, in his words, “there are no such things as technology problems. There are people projects with technology.”
That lesson was reinforced by this year’s launch of the MyLa311 program, a website and mobile app designed as a 21st-century version of the old 311 system. Ross and his workers collaborated with other city departments to make sure all needs and concerns were dealt with, and all details considered, in order to fulfill some 2.6 million annual service requests.
“We have to do this as a unified city,” Ross says. “It’s not my system, or their system, but a shared system. We can’t have zero-sum policies.”
Such a spirit has certainly come in handy in Los Angeles, which this year has faced historic wildfires and unrest related to raids on immigrants. The city also is preparing for the 2028 Summer Olympics while dealing with strained finances.
For Ross, that means keeping the city’s tech edge after more than 30 recent layoffs in his department and budget cuts that have exceeded 20 percent. Automation and AI promise to help L.A. fulfill its tech duties but cuts to citizen services are essentially assured.
Ross plans to tackle those challenges in a way that might seem familiar to many people.
“I think government really does its best when it acts like a middle-class family,” he says. “It is not wealthy enough to do it all — the dance lessons, etc. — and like them, we as a department need to make choices.”
He has won praise from elected officials for that attitude and his accomplishments during leaner times. “His forward-thinking approach has positioned the city’s Information Technology Agencyas a national model, even in the face of budget constraints,” says L.A. Council Member Monica Rodriguez. “Ted’s ability to lead innovation and secure our tech infrastructure is a testament to his commitment to public service and the residents of Los Angeles.”
Ross, the son of an aerospace engineer, comes from a family of tech pros, and for him, technology has global, not just municipal, influence. He showed that with his 2024 trip to Armenia for a democracy forum backed by the U.S. State Department.
There, he talked about digital government and how software and other tools can build trust between citizens and public agencies. Well-built digital and mobile services can encourage community engagement and give people a louder voice.
“We have so much we can take for granted, but they don’t,” he said.
Now, though, his focus in back on L.A. It’s already been a year for the history books for the nation’s second largest city, and it doesn’t seem that things will get easier anytime soon.
“I think L.A. is very scrappy,” Ross said. “We will always try to rise to the situation.”
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