Gino Menchini
Vice President for North America, Public Sector, CA
Gino P. Menchini was appointed on December 28, 2001 by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) and New York City's Chief Information Officer (CIO).
Mr. Menchini was no stranger to City government, having served the City in various technology management positions for 17 years. He began his civic career in 1980 at the Board of Education as a Special Assistant to the Chancellor, developing an enterprise data model and installing the first office automation systems at the Board of Education.
Mr. Menchini spent 14 years at the Board of Education in senior positions that ranged from Assistant to the Chancellor to Executive Director of the Board's Management Information Services Division. Under his stewardship, the Division successfully responded to citywide downsizing and budget reductions while continuing to expand systems services to the school system. Mr. Menchini also conceptualized and implemented as Project Director, the Board's Automate the Schools (ATS) project, which implemented local area networks and workstations in each of the 1,100 public school sites to serve over 5,000 users through a wide area network. ATS automated and integrated numerous administrative functions and delivered substantial productivity gains to school administrators by eliminating tens of millions of handwritten forms.
Following his tenure at the Board of Education, Mr. Menchini served as the Director of Citywide Information Technology for the Mayor's Office of Operations. His responsibilities included leveraging technology to control costs, increasing the productivity of the City's workforce, and improving the delivery of City services. He also managed and facilitated the development of strategic technologies and applications. Establishing and serving as Director of the City of New York's Year 2000 Project Office, Mr. Menchini was tasked with ensuring that the City's information systems were prepared for the impending millennium date change. He developed and implemented the City's Year 2000 Compliance Strategy and spearheaded the effort to simultaneously implement 700 remediation projects at 42 City agencies, which became the largest and most successful citywide project implementation of its kind.
Mr. Menchini left the public sector in 1997 to become the Vice President of Information Technology at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York. During his time there, Mr. Menchini was responsible for all aspects of the academic and administrative utilization of technology and telecommunications. Among his accomplishments was modernization of the college's technology infrastructure and establishment of an accredited bachelor's degree program for Information Technology.
Before assuming his recent position with the Bloomberg Administration, Mr. Menchini worked in the private sector as a Major Account Manager for Cisco Systems, Inc. for several public sector accounts. In this role, Mr. Menchini assisted the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management with the implementation of voice and data communication at its Emergency Operations Center and Family Assistance Center following the September 11th attacks.
As the City's CIO and DoITT Commissioner, reporting directly to Mayor Bloomberg, Mr. Menchini helped to establish and build upon a cornerstone of the Bloomberg Administration-the use of technology to support agency missions and make government more accessible, responsive, and accountable.
The largest single factor in improving the public's access to government has been the creation, growth, and success of the 311 Citizen Service Center. Since its official launch in March 2003, 3-1-1 has revolutionized the manner in which the public accesses non-emergency government information and services. All calls to 3-1-1 are answered by a live operator, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in an average of less than thirty seconds-with service offered in 171 languages. The call center regularly averages more than 40,000 calls per day, and has received more than 30 million calls since inception. This, coupled with enhancements to the NYC.gov website (including implementation of a new search engine, subscription email, and City photo gallery) and the creation of the trendsetting, Emmy-award winning NYC TV, are among the Commissioner's most enduring accomplishments in bringing City government to its constituents.
Also under Mr. Menchini's leadership, the City has commenced an important initiative to unify and consolidate emergency communications, including call-taking and dispatch (911), for the Police Department (NYPD), Fire Department (FDNY), and Emergency Medical Services. As part of this Emergency Communications Transformation Project, DoITT is working closely with NYPD and FDNY to build new facilities, streamline response processes, and update telephony, radio infrastructure, and applications to current technologies. To date, many critical upgrades have been achieved, including the replacement of radio towers in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx, and renovation of FDNY's central offices. As part of the renovation, DoITT completed implementation of a new logging and recording system, allowing FDNY to monitor and replay 911 calls and radio transmissions. Finally, Mr. Menchini directed the development of a new computer-aided dispatch system, which will ultimately serve the needs of both NYPD and FDNY when brought together in a unified call-taking environment. By moving in this direction, New York City will be able to respond better, faster, and smarter as it serves the approximately 11.5 million New Yorkers who require 911 services every year.
Under Mr. Menchini?s direction, the department undertook the construction of a citywide broadband wireless network for public safety. This network will support both uplink and downlink, the transmission of broadband applications such as multiple simultaneous full motion streaming video feeds, large graphics files, wireless call box alarms, traffic control signals and status reports, automatic vehicle location (AVL) data, and biological, chemical and radiological monitoring data. The network will utilize City buildings, light poles, and traffic lights for antennas, transmitters and receivers, while also utilizing the City's existing fiber infrastructure. When completed, this citywide network will provide a wireless backbone for applications running on mobile and fixed devices.
The department also embarked on a strategy for the city to shift toward an enterprise approach to IT, consolidating data centers, increasing utilization of the city?s wide area network, embarking on a number of citywide applications (Email, HR, EMS, and CRM) and establishing citywide IT contracts.
During the September 11th recovery effort, the blackout of 2003, a major 911 outage and the recent citywide transit strike, Mr. Menchini was responsible for prioritizing and coordinating the recovery of the city?s IT telecommunication infrastructure (including cable, cellular and ILEC services), on behalf of the city, providing technology to support government operations. During the blackout, New York City?s 311 handled over 170,000 calls. 311 handled over 240,000 calls in a single day during the transit strike.
He serves on the Board of the Brooklyn Public Library and St. Francis College's Board of Trustees. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Pace University and attended Pace University's Graduate School of Business.
Mr. Menchini is currently Vice President for North America, Public Sector for CA (Computer Associates). In that role, Mr. Menchini is helping CA focus on it?s public sector customers and how CA can help them to better manage their Enterprise IT, focusing on IT governance and project portfolio management, as well as helping them to deal with new challenges in a variety of areas including security and identity management.
