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Gov. John Bel Edwards speaks to employees, media and guests during the opening ceremony for the CGI Technologies and Solutions facility in 2016. The company announced Thursday it will expand into the Versailles Building in downtown Lafayette. 

It may be too early to say that Louisiana is turning a corner on diversification of its economy, but there certainly is evidence that the technology sector is speeding up.

The big announcement of the expansion of the Canada-based CGI in Lafayette is another sign of a welcome trend.

CGI will launch a significant expansion of its Lafayette IT Center of Excellence and create 400 new direct jobs, the company and Gov. John Bel Edwards announced Tuesday. CGI employment will be rising to 800 over the coming years at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Research Park, and at a second Lafayette Parish site to be determined. Statewide, CGI’s employment will reach 900.

Edwards lauded the partnership of state and local economic development agencies and higher education that will provide significant additional dollars to UL-Lafayette and other campuses for education of new tech workers.

It's a positive "blueprint for growth in the digital economy," the governor said.

Edwards' administration has fought hard to stabilize funding for higher education across the board. The governor has rightly cited support for higher ed as fundamental to keeping this trend going.

There's a lot of credit for CGI to go around, as these initiatives really cannot be entirely claimed by one administration. The UL-Lafayette campus had leadership from Ray Authement and Joseph Savoie that for years made computer science a priority, even during hard times for university funding.

Predecessors of Edwards contributed: Former Gov. Kathleen Blanco, part of a UL-Lafayette family, championed investment in higher education. While overall college funding suffered because of bad budget decisions under former Gov. Bobby Jindal, he also brokered some of the early deals that targeted some dollars for computer science programs.

Thus, the long-term roster of tech companies is getting impressive, including the new DXC center on Poydras Street in downtown New Orleans.

But it must be a part of long-term process of growth, one that Edwards ought to stress as legislators continue to shortchange educational institutions. Louisiana over the last decade has cut back aid to colleges, one of the worst records in the country among the states.

Another underlying reality that we think the governor and Legislature ought to focus on: No one campus, no single engineering or computer science program, is going to provide all the needed employees at IBM and EA in Baton Rouge, Waitr and CGI in Lafayette, GE Capital and others in New Orleans.

We can and will prosper in Louisiana in a knowledge economy, so long as we invest in the new factories of wealth: minds of our students, in schools locally and in colleges statewide.

Congratulations to all involved in this new coup for Louisiana's diversifying future.