Little Hoover Outlines 9 Recommendations for Better State IT

Multiple hearings and months of work have produced another set of recommendations from the Little Hoover Commission, this time focusing on improving the state’s broad-scope IT approaches.

The report, titled Technology and California State Government: Procurement, Innovation, Delivery, outlines nine key recommendations to improve project delivery, technology procurement, and continued innovation in state government.

It’s no secret that departments, and especially their vendors, have become accustomed to large and often unwieldy projects — see the laundry list of cost and timelines the commission cited in its report for more details on that.

Notably, within that list, the commission highlighted 31 projects where the average project approval-to-stage-one timeline was 3.6 years. The longest time to approval was for the California Department of State Hospitals’ Electronic Health Records (EHR) project at 9.6 years, while the shortest was the California Highway Patrol’s Law Enforcement Records Management project at six months.

As witnesses testified during the hearings the commission held in April, May and August, the state’s funding methods are partially responsible for the current environment, with agencies and departments forced to make outsized fiscal asks to compensate for the uncertain budget environment they operate in.

The deep roster of expert witnesses highlighted the need to not only change funding dynamics, but also how the state approaches its aging infrastructure. The inclination to wait until end-of-life and beyond sets the stage for big, risky lifts that could have been avoided with other approaches.

On the procurement front, current and former state officials called out the need to better leverage its bargaining power when buying IT goods and services, which is a direction the California Department of Technology is already pushing with regard to AI tools and technologies.

The commission seemed to take the string of testimony to heart, issuing a nine-recommendation report that called for the following reforms and course adjustments:

1. Develop a plan for comprehensive reform of the state’s project delivery system, led by the Legislature and including public- and private-sector stakeholders.
2. Adopt a measured-outcome product model with a focus on service improvements, and a stronger Office of Data and Innovation to guide departments in this work.
3. Reduce departmental reliance on centralized project controls while also giving departments more independence to manage projects within their operational needs.
4. Shift away from “burdensome, front-loaded approval processes” and toward “continuous reporting, risk-based oversight, and financial accountability,” with CDT moving from an approval-based role to more of a policy, interoperability, and technical assistance focus.
5. Create a Technology Finance Board to “oversee phased funding, modernization funding programs, financial accountability, and corrective intervention for troubled projects.”
6. Simplify procurement to the point that departments can develop solicitations vendors can navigate with internal expertise, while also moving to a model that defines the problems and outcomes solicitations are targeting.
7. Continue to strengthen and support the state’s Technology Modernization Fund and similar programs to “align technology development with state funding cycles while preserving resources for future modernization efforts.”
8. Lower costs by reducing duplication and unnecessary customization of solutions.
9. Focus on strategic modernization of “outdated and fragmented technology systems, including code, databases, and infrastructure.”

For those unfamiliar with the purpose of the Little Hoover Commission, these recommendations are provided to the Legislature and state leaders, but there is no requirement to act upon them.

The full report can be found here, and access to three hearings is available here.