Insider Takes: State Health CIO on Future Directions, Disease Surveillance

The chief information officer at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), one of the many entities under the umbrella of the California Health and Human Services Agency, discussed strategic planning recently with Industry Insider — California, offering details on a potential budget proposal and on the long-range work now underway.

John Roussel is CDPH’s chief information officer and a deputy director, roles he has held since June. He was previously assistant deputy director and chief technology officer from June 2021-June 2022. Roussel will mark 20 years in state service this June and before joining CDPH two years ago, he was most recently assistant deputy director, Information Technology Services Division at the California State Lottery.

Roussel is a graduate of the 21st class of the state’s Information Technology Leadership Academy (ITLA), a 17-week program for public-sector IT staffers and executives with a focus on critical leadership skills, and his professional licenses and certifications include certification in IT Service Management from the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Foundation, and an Enterprise Architecture Practitioner Certification. In May 2008, he received a Best of California Award from the Center for Digital Government* for his work in technology.
In a video interview with Industry Insider on Feb. 15 at the California Public Sector CIO Academy*, Roussel discussed the department’s 10-year strategic plan, The Future of Public Health, which will closely examine “the technology, services and capabilities of public health going forward.” The plan itself is now in the planning process.

CDPH met the COVID-19 pandemic with responsiveness and innovation, Roussel said, moving to a multicloud environment and adopting modern technologies. The Future of Public Health, he said, will encompass CDPH’s workforce, data and technology infrastructure as well as its digital transformation as strategizing continues this year, followed by development and minimum viable products (MVPs) to execute. Among activities on the subject, The Future of Public Health Workgroup convened “local health executives, health officers, administrators, and administration leadership,” per a September 2021 group memo, to create a “framework for California’s 21st century public health system and identify core infrastructure foundational governmental public health service investments capable of meeting current and future public health needs.”

Officials are also looking closely at the future of disease surveillance, the CIO said, and will create a budget change proposal either this year or in early 2024 to seek funding.

“And that will be consolidation of our disease surveillance systems, looking at them as a capability, a surveillance capability and shared services in an infrastructure,” Roussel said. In a page on its website last updated in March and titled “California Future Disease Surveillance System (FDSS) Solicitation-Bidder’s Library,” CDPH indicated it and the California Department of Technology “are seeking an innovative, cloud-hosted disease surveillance and reporting system to perform local and statewide disease surveillance.” The endeavor’s exact timing isn’t clear; however, this article may be updated.

*The Center for Digital Government is part of e.Republic, parent company of Industry Insider — California.