Architecture Governance

The bodies that issued standards nobody could be compelled to follow, the practice of getting them adopted anyway, and the design authority that does the same job inside a services firm.

Discipline

• Application RationalizationDeepReducing a portfolio assembled independently over decades — platform consolidation, technology lifecycle planning and technical debt reduction.
• Architect DevelopmentDeepBuilding an architecture practice of up to fourteen, on a weekly rhythm and a design review gate, and moving engineers into senior and lead roles.
• Architecture GovernanceSpecialistReview boards, charters and the design of decision-making bodies — including one written so its chair could be outvoted.
• Business Intelligence & Performance AnalyticsWorkingArchitecture direction and standards over an enterprise analytics platform, held separately from the group that built the reports on it.
• Capability RoadmappingDeepCurrent, interim and target-state design, multi-year capability roadmaps, and enterprise architecture assessments across a federated estate.
• Design DocumentationSpecialistThe discipline of writing a design down, revising it under review, and stating its own risk plainly — carried to revision 16, 26 and 35 on the largest programs.
• Enterprise ArchitectureSpecialistThe discipline of placing technology correctly in a business's data flows, risk posture and cost structure — the through-line of the last two decades.

Programs and engagements

• Post-Quantum Cryptography ProgramProposed December 2025 · accepted January 2026 · began February 2026A thirty-six-month joint research engagement with the group's parent company, originated rather than assigned — proposed December 2025, accepted January 2026, transacted at CFO level between two companies.
• Enterprise Architecture Practice Build2024–2026An architecture practice of up to fourteen, built and run to a design review gate and a weekly rhythm — so engagements were delivered against one design language rather than individual preference.
• Architecture Review BoardFrom November 2021The successor governance body, and the first with a budget attached — a five-to-ten year capital plan rather than a rolling list of purchases.
• Enterprise Business Intelligence Platform and Capability2012–2016Architecture authority over the City's analytics platform, held deliberately apart from the group that built the reports — with the capability hired and taught to a published standard.
• Architecture by Influence2010–2024A CIO's instruction — manage by influence rather than by headcount — and the fourteen years of practice built on it, in an estate where nothing could be mandated anyway.
• Proving Products Before Recommending Them2010–2024A standing part of the architecture function rather than an occasional exercise — pilot against the estate's own conditions, then hand it over with the operators trained.
• Enterprise Architecture Program2009–2024The EA practice itself — business, information, technical and solution viewpoints, with strategy, assessments and multi-year capability roadmaps for a platform shared by agencies that answered to different elected officers.
• Enterprise Security Committee and Governance Program2009–2012The city's enterprise architecture review board, chaired and chartered — and, in the years before the City had a Chief Security Officer, the body where security policy was set.
• Architecture Technology Governance Committee2008–2021The second governance body, and the one where architecture decisions were actually worked — with the operations and delivery teams in the room rather than only architects.
• Requirements or Findings: When Architecture Gets Called2007–2022The same function with the same authority produces requirements on one capital program and findings on another — and the only variable is whether the project called it before or after the build.

Documents

• Enterprise Security Committee CharterWhite paper · 2010The charter for the body that served as the city's enterprise architecture review board — written so its chair could be outvoted. Revision 5.0.

Assessment & Advisory

Work whose deliverable was a judgment rather than a build — and which was worth most when it ended in a defensible no.

Programs and engagements

• Municipal Infrastructure Assessment to RFP2024–2025An infrastructure assessment for a town government, scoped from the start to become the foundation of its own procurement rather than a proposal for follow-on work.
• Citywide Network Total Cost of Ownership Study2023–2024A weighted scoring instrument for a manufacturer standard ahead of a refresh — which earned itself within three weeks, when a reseller's savings claim turned out to be priced against the wrong baseline.
• Gunshot Detection and Active-Shooter Tracking Feasibility Pilot2023–2024ShotSpotter acoustic detection tied to Bosch camera estates and Genetec video management, tested against a seconds-not-minutes requirement.
• Holographic Display EvaluationClosed November 2023Emerging display technology assessed on a borrow-before-buy basis, closed as a zero-dollar equipment evaluation award.
• Enterprise AI Readiness Assessment2022–2024Two years of technology review and systems analysis on where AI could fit a consolidated city-county government — and, as often, where it could not yet be defended.
• PLC Alarm Notification over Cellular Assessment2022–2023How a controller raises an alarm that reaches a human when the site has no operator in front of it and no network worth the name.
• NFL Stadium Cybersecurity Review2022–2023A league Internal Audit assessment of the city-owned stadium against the Department of Homeland Security's stadium cybersecurity guidelines, reaching the building's control systems as much as its enterprise IT.
• Electronic Paper Tablet Assessment and Rollout2019–2023A personal device that became a supported city endpoint — after the enterprise web filtering estate I had built turned out to be the thing breaking it.
• Building Automation and PoE Lighting Feasibility Pilot2018–2022Whether a building could move to PoE lighting without stranding the legacy lighting already installed.
• Nine Years to an Integration Platform2014–2023A platform question carried across two evaluations and nine years — lost in 2014 to a vendor who could discount faster than a migration could be justified, and answered in 2023 by attaching it to a building.
• The Virtual Desktop Position2011–2023A decade of evaluation whose deliverable was a refusal — two platforms piloted and closed by change order, and an objection that held for eight years.
• Automated Asset Tracking Program2007–2016Nine years carrying the asset tracking agenda across two titles, argued on billing accuracy rather than loss prevention — and ending in a position and a scoped proof of concept rather than a deployment.
• Florida Rock Facilities Technology Assessment2002–2003Estate-wide survey establishing what could be connected, what it would cost, and what had to be built first.
• Reliability Engineering Practice2000–2023A reliability toolchain bought for one utility engagement in 2000, carried into a city estate, and still running twenty-three years later — availability as a computed number rather than a drawn assertion.

Cost, Budget & Commercial

A technology budget built, allocated and defended in public, and services costed and sold against commercial alternatives.

Discipline

• IT Cost Modeling & ChargebackSpecialistA full technology budget allocated across every agency by measured consumption rather than negotiation — designed in 2012, first implemented in 2013, owned for eleven budget cycles.
• Portfolio Planning & CommercialSpecialistA $48M–$62M annual budget built, allocated and defended in public — plus TCO, ROI, build-versus-buy and vendor management.

Programs and engagements

• Enterprise Agreement Pursuit — Global AutomotivePursuit March–April 2025 · headquarters session May 2025 · relationship carried forwardCisco services subject-matter expert on a bid for a global automotive manufacturer's North American arm — a two-day clarification window, an affiliate's engineering bench as the differentiator, a loss, and a headquarters meeting four weeks later.
• Vendor and Partner Program2024–2026Seven technology and service partners brought in across two years for capability the practice did not have or could not scale, with a formal manufacturer specialization track behind it.
• Data Center Estate and Colocation Program2015–2024Six tiered sites for the city and five external agencies — and a municipal IT department selling colocation against commercial carriers, and winning on engineering.
• CBM Cost Model and Customer Billing System2012–2024A full technology budget allocated across every agency by measured consumption rather than negotiation — designed in 2012, first implemented in 2013, owned for eleven budget cycles.
• FLGISA Cost Model Program2012–2021Taking the City of Jacksonville's IT cost modeling, chargeback and allocation approach to peer jurisdictions across multiple conference years.
• Enterprise Technology Budget Program2011–2024A $48M to $62M annual technology budget, built and defended in public across thirteen cycles for a consolidated city-county government.
• The Capital Project Evaluation MatrixMethod authored March 2008 · the quadrant workbook created 18 March 2009 · last recorded use 17 May 2023The weighted scoring instrument behind the City's technology capital funding — and the single workbook built in March 2009 that was still deciding a security product purchase fourteen years later.

Documents

• IT Cost Modeling and Chargeback for Local GovernmentTalk · 2016Conference presentations to Florida jurisdictions on moving from pooled cost allocated by PC count to consumption-based chargeback.
• Customer Billing System Process DocumentationDesign document · 2014The end-to-end process behind the city's IT chargeback platform, spanning sixteen functional lanes and eight systems of record. Co-authored.

Public Safety & Emergency Operations

Continuity, activation and the systems that have to hold on the day everything else does not.

Discipline

• Continuity of OperationsSpecialistA two-hundred-page all-hazards plan whose first instruction is to skip the plan and go straight to the appendices.
• Deployable InfrastructureDeepKits built for reproducibility — because a capability has to work in the hands of whoever draws it, not only the person who built it.
• Disaster RecoverySpecialistRecovery architecture across multiple data centers, with out-of-region standby and a formal separation between backup and archive.
• Emergency OperationsSpecialistSeven hurricane activations as Emergency Coordination Officer, each producing an after-action review that fed back into the architecture.
• Public Emergency Information PlatformsWorkingThe public side of emergency management — where a citizen-facing service is the channel residents are told to use, and its availability stops being a web operations concern.

Programs and engagements

• Ed Ball Hearing Room — Backup Council Chambers2022–2024A committee room specified to run a City Council meeting if the Chamber were unavailable — which makes it a continuity facility for the legislative body, not a meeting room.
• Disaster Recovery Validation and Application Tiering2020Criticality bound to recovery objectives in an instrument rather than a narrative, and a definition of "tested" that the estate could not yet meet — reported rather than softened.
• Republican National Convention — National Special Security EventJune – October 2020Critical Infrastructure Subcommittee for a national special security event relocated to the city eight weeks into planning — first-responder mobility, venue design, carrier redundancy, and federal sensors landed on a municipal estate.
• Consolidated CAD/911 Dispatch System2016–2024Two agencies with separate commands onto one dispatch platform, cutting response times from five to ten minutes down to one to two.
• Cecil Disaster Recovery Data Center2015–2023Facility and network design for the recovery site — power, cooling and carrier entry as well as what ran inside.
• E911 Caller Location and Backup Answering Point2013–2021Making the dispatcher see a room instead of a phone number — then building a second answering point so the dispatch center was not a single point of failure.
• JaxReady — Public Emergency Preparedness Platform2012–2024The City's evacuation and flood zone lookup, on mobile and the public web — carried into the emergency public information chain, and tested as critical infrastructure rather than as a website.
• ITD Continuity of Operations Plan2007–2016A two-hundred-page all-hazards continuity plan whose first instruction is to skip the plan and go straight to the appendices.
• Emergency Operations Center Activations2006–2021Seven activations keeping public-safety and EOC systems available under hurricane conditions — in Logistics from 2006 and as the division's Emergency Coordination Officer from 2008 — with each after-action review fed back into the architecture.
• Fort Stewart Mobile Disaster Recovery Fleet2003–2004A fleet of vehicles able to deploy across Georgia during disasters and operate where fixed infrastructure was gone.
• Florida National Guard Continuity of Operations Plan2001–2003The first COOP of the career — the discipline carried forward into the City of Jacksonville plan a decade later.
• First Coast Radio System2000–2024Regional shared public safety radio across three system generations — original, retrofit, and full P25 replacement.

Documents

• ITD Continuity of Operations PlanDesign document · 2009Two hundred pages, all-hazards, sole author. Aligned to the county emergency management plan and built on Incident Command System doctrine.

Records, Compliance & Accountability

Where the retention rule is a law rather than a policy, and where the numbers are a public record once published.

Discipline

• Data Classification & RetentionSpecialistClassification schemes that had to survive a court rather than an audit.
• Public Records LawSpecialistThe workflow by which a citizen's request becomes produced records under Florida statute — designed to make production repeatable rather than heroic.

Programs and engagements

• Comprehensive Performance Management — JaxOps, JaxAnalytics, JaxScore2013–2016The division's flagship analytics program in three layers, ending in a public dashboard — where disclosed numbers constrain the model underneath rather than the presentation on top.
• Security Posture, Incidents and Federal Liaison2012–2024Working directly with the City's Chief Security Officer on posture, governance, attacks and breaches — and alongside Homeland Security and the FBI when an incident reached that far.
• Public Records Request Methodology2010–2018The workflow by which a citizen's request becomes produced records under Florida statute.
• Records Retention and Disposition Standards2008–2018Classification, retention and defensible disposition under Florida public records law, across an estate where criminal justice records, patient information, court records and elections data shared one platform.

Change & Release Governance

The gates. Automation multiplies the blast radius of a mistake, which is an argument for more governance rather than less.

Discipline

• Change ManagementSpecialistA process designed from first principles, proven, and only then fitted with a commercial product — which is the right order.
• Orchestration & AutomationDeepItential, webMethods, Terraform and Kubernetes — governed on the principle that automation multiplies the blast radius of a mistake.

Programs and engagements

• Infrastructure and Integration Automation2018–2024Recurring infrastructure and integration work automated on orchestration platforms, governed on the principle that automation multiplies the blast radius of a mistake.
• JEA Change Management System2000–2003A web-based change management process and system designed from first principles, later carried to the City as the enterprise standard.
• Enterprise Change Management Standard1999–2012A change process designed for a utility in 1999, carried into the City as its enterprise standard, and handed to operations in 2012 — after which it outlasted both commercial platforms bought to run it.