Those themes emerged in a recent virtual briefing with three chief information officers – Liza Massey of Marin County, Rob Lloyd of San Jose and Gaurav Garg of the city of Santa Clara. The key takeaways from the briefing:
- All three governments have come full circle on in-office/hybrid/remote work since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020: Marin County and the cities of San Jose and Marin had already been working on remote-work policies for some workers before the restrictions went into place, and then virtually all employees began working remotely, with almost no one working onsite and with government offices closed to in-person visits. Now, that’s opening up again as governments shift back to what’s expected to be a hybrid model for employees.
- Public engagement with government in Marin County has “skyrocketed,” Massey said. Garg said he’s seen a similar jump in Santa Clara: “Public engagement over the long haul has gone up, and our meetings, interestingly, last frequently beyond midnight, and so … that’s been a big shift for the whole organization,” he said. Similarly, employee engagement has ballooned since the city shifted its employee town hall meetings to online, Garg noted. Whereas between 100 and 150 people would attend the employee meetings when they were in person, they’ve recently had 788 attending over two sessions. Lloyd said the number of people attending and commenting at San Jose City Council meetings has also grown exponentially. All three CIOs noted that the increased public participation has caused meetings to run much longer than they did in person. Said Lloyd: “It is phenomenal, the public participation that we see now. We literally make different decisions. We’ve gone from dozens of people attending in person to hundreds of people attending virtually, to thousands and multiple thousands of comments. Our meetings are very, very long.”
- The shift from in-person meetings to virtual ones, and now to hybrid, has also changed the quality of public participation, Massey noted. When a member of the public addresses the board of supervisors remotely, most turn on their video cameras – and she said that’s led to a notable increase in civility. “With some issues that are controversial, people who turn the video on tend to be a little more respectful, even if their comments aren’t necessarily positive in nature,” said Massey, who moderated the CIOs’ conversation last month as part of the Bay Area Virtual Digital Government Summit.
- Lloyd said San Jose’s elected leaders have been receptive to the increase in public engagement partly because, with hybrid meetings, they’re hearing from a broader cross-section of the community about their concerns. Previously, the logistics of attending in-person council meetings didn’t attract nearly the audience or the attention. Lloyd said it’s important for those running hybrid public meetings to keep both audiences in mind – those in-person and those attending online.
- Garg noted that in recruiting and retaining tech workers, Santa Clara has had to look outside the area for specialized talent “in key areas like PeopleSoft support and some of the very constrained technology areas.” The city began outsourcing its recruiting needs, and he added: “That’s here to stay as talent gets harder and harder to source in the local area.”
- Lloyd noted that the shifting logistics of public meetings may require some adjustments to the Brown Actand other regulations governing public meetings and access. Some laws that addressed public in-person meetings may need adjustment to account for the hybrid participation of public servants and the public.
- A host of other issues that need attention as a result of the shift to remote/hybrid government work are also being considered, the CIOs noted, including ergonomic considerations for remote workers; different rules for remote work based on departments’ differing needs; and negotiations with employee labor unions over workplace regulations.
Juggling such a varied list of internal and external demands is going to change the nature of public-sector IT leadership, Lloyd said.
“To be that future-based CIO,” he said, “we’re going to have to be able to talk that language, walk that walk and solve those problems.”
