As part of Industry Insider — California’s ongoing efforts to educate readers on state agencies, their IT plans and initiatives, here’s the latest in our periodic series of interviews with departmental IT leaders.
Mohammed Al Rawi has been the award-winning chief information officer for the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office since March 2019, a role he took after having served as CIO for the L.A. County Parks and Recreation Department since December 2016. He began working in government as the IT deputy and then as deputy for technology and innovation for the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. A native of Iraq, Al Rawi began his career as the IT and technical director in the Los Angeles Times’ Baghdad bureau. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from California State University, Los Angeles, and his Executive Leadership certification from the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy. He was among Government Technology’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers in 2018, and that year he also won an Outstanding IT Project award from Government Technology and a Best of California award from the Center for Digital Government*. He has served since 2018 as chairman of the County of Los Angeles Innovation and Emerging Technology Commission.
Industry Insider — California: As the CIO of the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, how do you describe your role?
Mohammed Al Rawi: The CIO role in state and local organizations such as the Public Defender’s Office is unique and requires development of specific skills. In addition to the technology vision that any CIO should set for the organization, successful state and local CIOs advocate at all levels starting from the top, with the elected body, all the way to the end user. Driving business transformation in state and local is far more complex than any organization, as local government is not driven by profit; it organically became an organization that preserves functional business processes regardless of if they’re the most cost efficient or not. Debunking the notion of “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” in local government is a daunting task that requires a consistent communication strategy to harness the hearts and minds of elected offices, executive office, departmental executive teams, line managers, and line staff. When I look back at my decadelong county career, I can trace back every successful enterprise business transformation I drove to this strategy.
Industry Insider: How do you define “digital transformation?” How far along is the Public Defender’s Office in that process, and how will you know when it’s finished?
Al Rawi: Digital transformation is often taken literally — go paperless. While it is nice to call it that, it is not really a strong imperative that would harness the hearts and minds to go through that change. In my opinion, digital transformation is a momentum that allows business leaders to take a step back and look on how they do business, unfold each function and see how it could be further streamlined, then discuss how technology can aid that transformation of each function.
Industry Insider: Does your department have a strategic plan, and may we hyperlink to it? How big a role will you play in writing the next strategic plan?
Al Rawi: State and local government agencies are increasingly required to have an established and well-defined strategic plan. Our strategic plan started from the customer we serve, our client — the person that everyone agrees on to be an imperative for strategic change. All measurable outcomes we have identified for each goal in our strategic plan directly link to our clients. Having the client as the imperative for every goal is not only critical for garnering support, but it ensures that every goal and strategy is interconnected one way or another, enabling teams and leaders to work together on their strategy.
The L.A. County Public Defender’s Office (PD) is uniquely situated as it is becoming the beacon for justice reform, the department that is sought by state and county decision-makers to benchmark justice reform policies; therefore, technology and data analytics is at the core of each goal on the strategic plan. PD is the only indigent-defense organization of this size that is completely digital. Starting in 2020, this 108-year-old organization has been conducting all of its business transactions electronically to represent more than 100,000 clients a year at municipal and superior courts across the county of Los Angeles.
Industry Insider: What big initiatives or projects are coming up for the Public Defender’s Office? What sorts of developing opportunities and RFPs should we be watching for in the next six to 12 months?
Al Rawi: PD successfully transformed its business to fully digital after decommissioning over 23 different legacy systems and going to a centralized Client Case Management System (CCMS) on Salesforce.com. This system has been the system of record for PD operations for felonies and misdemeanors at both juvenile and adult courts since 2020. There are a series of RFPs that will be released starting this year to get Salesforce system integrators to implement new SFDC modules and enhance existing ones.
Industry Insider: What is your estimated IT budget, and how many employees does your IT team have? What is the overall budget?
Al Rawi: PD’s budget is $260 million annually. The IT budget varies based on projects every fiscal year. PD’s IT organization is comprised of 30 in-house IT professionals and an average of 20 contractors.
Industry Insider: How do you prefer to be contacted by vendors, including via social media such as LinkedIn? How might vendors best educate themselves before meeting with you?
Al Rawi: LinkedIn and email.
Industry Insider: If you could change one thing about IT procurement, what would it be?
Al Rawi: Waterfall approach of system implementations, as state and local is aspiring to take an agile development approach. Procurement and RFPs are rigid, requiring fixed price requirements and deliverables, which takes projects back to the waterfall approach.
Industry Insider: As chairman of the Los Angeles County Innovation and Emerging Technology Commission, can you tell us what that is and how it’s progressed in the past four years?
Al Rawi: The county of Los Angeles went through massive transformation the past decade, going from 100 percent physical servers across 48 different data centers into 100 percent high-density, virtualized server infrastructure all co-located at a single data center, government, and public cloud. That core transformation opened possibilities to use innovative and emerging technology solutions to address problems from social services, health services, criminal legal system, to protecting from drowning at pools. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has empowered digital transformation in the county not only to modernize county services for residents, but to also ensure resilience, accountability and transparency. The Board of Supervisors established the Innovation and Emerging Technology Commission, as well as tasking the Quality and Productivity Commission to continuously push and challenge all county departments to innovate and leverage cutting-edge technology tools to improve the services we provide.
Industry Insider: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the gov tech/SLED sector?
Al Rawi: Government Technology publications and events are a great platform for sharing technology knowledge, success and lessons across public-sector organizations. Resources from Info-Tech and Gartner including research and subject matter experts are also critical to acquiring knowledge, connecting to subject matter experts and staying up to date with technology trends and applicability in state and local government.
Industry Insider: What are your hobbies, and what do you enjoy reading?
Al Rawi: Racing cars on track is my favorite activity — it teaches me how to make critical decisions in split seconds. Reviewing GPS and video recording of my laps shows how I tackled each apex and what I need to change next, which often involves going against common sense such as braking, or turning early. It’s one of the best learning activities I enjoy.
I finally got to start reading The Innovatorsby Walter Isaacson, a book that I had on my list for a long time.
*Government Technology, the Center for Digital Government and Industry Insider — California are part of e.Republic.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and brevity.
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