Chris Cruz is the Chief Deputy Director of the California Department of Technology and the Deputy State Chief Information Officer for the State of California.
Prior to this position, Mr. Cruz served the Department of Technology as the Chief Deputy Director of Operations. In this capacity, Mr. Cruz oversaw the delivery of California data services to over 400 state and local government entities, was responsible of the state’s consolidated email systems, and for operating the largest telecommunications network in the state.
Cruz has served at the CIO at the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) from 2010-2011. At DHCS, Cruz oversaw a $1 billion project portfolio and some of California’s biggest IT initiatives, including a mission-critical Medicaid Management Information System expansion and upgrade. Cruz has spearheaded a cloud readiness assessment of the state’s major health IT systems. Under Cruz’s leadership, the department enacted a voluntary teleworking and virtual desktops plan for IT workers in order to attract and retain top talent.
Cruz has worked for the state government for more than a decade after beginning his career in the private sector as a project manager and consultant. He was CIO at the California Department of Food and Agriculture (2007-2010) and an IT manager at the Department of Health Services (2004-2007).
Cruz earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Management from California State University at Sacramento and attended the UC Davis Executive Program in Leadership Excellence.

Peter Paul Liebert V, 38, of Washington DC, has been appointed chief information security officer and director of the office of information security at the California Department of Technology. Liebert has held several positions at FireEye Incorporated, including senior product manager at FireEye Incorporated since 2016 and threat assessment manager from 2015 to 2016. He held several positions at the United States Cyber Command, where he was special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy from 2014 to 2015 and senior cyber policy analyst from 2013 to 2014. Liebert served as cybersecurity and logistics analyst in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations from 2011 to 2013 and Palestinian logistics mentoring and warehouse information technology program lead at Dyncorp International from 2008 to 2010. He served as an officer in the United States Navy from 2000 to 2008. He earned a Master of Public Administration degree from Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Master of Science degree in international security from Cranfield University.

Scott MacDonald, the Deputy Director over the Department of Technology’s CalCloud Division, has more than 15 years of service in the public sector covering various aspects of information technology that range from security, application and database development, enterprise architecture, network management and server administration activities. Prior to coming to the Department of Technology in 2015, Scott was the Agency Information Security Officer at the California Department of Corrections. Additionally, Scott has experience in the private sector working with information technology and electronic communications.
Scott holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Information Systems, degrees in electronic communications, and holds the CISSP designation as well as many other IT certifications.

Ben Word is the Chief Enterprise Architect and Deputy Director of the Enterprise Architecture Office, which serves as the state’s lead advisor in directing statewide enterprise architecture, technology initiatives, and enterprise governance. Ben is also responsible for the development and maintenance of the state’s Enterprise Architecture framework and associated policy and standards, including standards for application development. This framework enables application integration and rationalization, shared services, interoperability, and data and information sharing statewide in order to achieve resource and cost efficiencies for the state.
Prior to his appointment, Ben was the Chief Enterprise Architect at the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) where under his leadership, the DHCS received an Excellence in Enterprise Architecture Award during the 12th Annual Enterprise Architecture conference in Washington, D.C. for their IT strategic plan called “Health Care Innovation Strategy: A 2020 Vision Strategic Plan” for Enterprise Innovation and Information Services.