Newly Minted CIO Taylor Has an Agenda: Listen, Then Act

The Department of Health Care Services, a large entity within the sprawling California Health and Human Services Agency, has a new technology leader as of this week: Crystal Taylor, who’s held numerous specialty and leadership positions in state government over the past 18 years, was named chief information officer and deputy director of the Enterprise Technology Services (ETS) division. Taylor succeeds and reports to Chris Riesen, who was promoted last fall to chief operating officer for DHCS.

Taylor has a deep background in state government, is an award-winning veteran of state service, having served for the last three years as DHCS’ chief of the IT Strategy Services Division. She had previously served as the chief of DHCS’ Product Branch. Before joining DHCS, she held several roles in state government: assistant director of the California Department of Technology’s Project Management Office; section manager for the State Franchise Tax Board’s Systems Engineering and Access Management Section; budget officer for the Franchise Tax Board’s fiscal portfolio; and fiscal and policy analyst for the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Taylor, a Sacramento resident, received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Lafayette College and two master’s degrees — in economic policy and urban and regional planning — from Princeton University. She is also a speaker and participant in industry and government conferences and forums, including the *California Public Sector CIO Academy in March and an Industry Insider Member Briefing last month.

She enters her new role with high-level endorsements from executives in DHCS and CHHS.

CHHS’ agency chief information officer, Adam Dondro, told Industry Insider: “I’ve known Crystal for most of my career, and she has always been a positive force for change, a compassionate leader, and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. CalHHS, DHCS, and the people of California are lucky to have her expertise driving forward our vision of a Healthy California for All! I couldn’t be more excited.”

Riesen told Industry Insider that he’s similarly gratified with Taylor’s elevation: “Crystal is an extremely capable and passionate leader who brings a unique combination of skills and background to the chief information officer position. DHCS is excited to have Crystal in this role during a time we are driving vital changes in how we build, deliver, and operate information technology products in support of DHCS’ impactful program changes that are leading to a healthy California for all.”

In a brief interview this week with Industry Insider — California, Taylor discussed her goals, plans and priorities as she takes on her new role. (This interview was lightly edited for style and brevity.)

Industry Insider — California: What are your top one or two or three goals and priorities as you step in as CIO and deputy director of ETS?

Taylor: A couple of things. One, I need to really understand the broader organization that I’m now responsible for. I’ve been a part of and a leader within two pieces of that organization. But there are two pieces that I’ve never specifically been a part of. And so I need to prioritize in the next 100 days that listening tour where I’m going out across Enterprise Technology Services and talking with the managers and staff across the organization about the issues they’re facing today that are getting in the way of our enterprise goals.

In my view, I’m really carrying a torch that has already been started by Chris Riesen, my predecessor and current boss. He’s been guiding us towards a people-process-technology transformation of the program, and we are about two and a half years into what will be a long road — probably a seven-year road map for our implementation. What’s getting in the way of our ability to achieve those goals and objectives? The goals and objectives are tied around things that matter to the broader DHCS. It needs to transition towards a more iterative, incremental product delivery model for how we, as an Enterprise Technology Services organization, provide those services to the department. We need to do it faster; we need to be ahead of the curve. And so how do we change our processes, the capabilities of our people, how we organize ourselves, how we communicate and use all kinds of great technology and tools? I need to dive in and better understand what’s getting in the way of our ability to move forward on those objectives, and then help move those boulders.

One of the things associated with this transition is how much of an enterprise leader I need to be, looking out across the business landscape and bringing to bear my ability to partner effectively with our business customers and partners, understand their strategic priorities, and then look inward to our program to make sure that we are moving nimbly around to meet those priorities.

DHCS has made great inroads over the last two to three years in the area of enterprise governance, in making more transparent our priorities, and our strategic areas of focus. We have an annual operating plan for the first time in a few years; that helps us rally as a broader organization around shared enterprise priorities that we can measure our progress against. And I’m looking at how the Enterprise Technology Services program is positioned to support those needs and that our focus areas are aligned with those priorities. Those will be a couple of key areas that I’ll focus on. I’m really making sure that I’m bringing to bear the things that have led me to be chosen for this role, but then really putting on my listening hat, because I know there’s a lot to learn.

I feel like the path is a bit laid out in front of me, that the way forward is to become more nimble, to make our processes cleaner and more transparent. Work on simplification of our infrastructure environment to the extent possible, and reuse of the technology modules that we have available to us so that they can be better managed and turned into enterprise services that can meet the needs of our partners.

IICA: What drew you to seek the CIO position?

Taylor: The journey that I’m on brought me to DHCS about five years ago, in a role as the product chief, which, in my mind, directly led me to this juncture because so much of the transformation of this Enterprise Technology Services program and how we will support our enterprise customers is to bring about a better framing and an investment in IT product delivery. I think my background [is] understanding products and thinking about the world in which we live as services and products that live a long, long time and must constantly evolve. They’re not short-term projects that all begin and end and then we throw them away. No, these are products that have a life cycle, and they need to be continually managed — and that view means we have to be very nimble in how we think about them.

We have to adjust rapidly to changes in our environment that change what the need is today — like, what does that product need to do today? Some days you need to take notes, another day what you need is something that can sort the information that’s in your inbox quickly. DHCS is one of the more complex policy environments that I’ve ever seen, and in the state of California, our health policy environment changes daily. And that means that the business capabilities that need to be delivered are ever-changing. That means that our systems and services need to have a pace of change that is fast enough to keep up with that. Part of getting to that nimbleness and ability to quickly deliver a new business capability or to tweak a business capability to align it to what’s happening in the policy environment — that’s the need for IT product delivery processes and capabilities.

IICA: What guidance do you have for vendors?

Taylor: I welcome the opportunity to meet with vendors. Oftentimes, I’ll bring in my direct reports across the organization to be a part of demonstrations and articulation of our business needs and where we’re headed in a particular domain. What I look for from a vendor is curiosity and deep knowledge of the kinds of problems that we’re facing. Much of that information is publicly available: They can see legislation that’s impacting our environment; they can see Budget Change Proposals from the prior year that are impacting our environment. So, vendors coming prepared, knowledgeable about our work and mission and our priorities, as well as their own ability to provide services. Finally, looking for vendors who are willing, interested, and happy to partner with other vendors and the state. You know, we’re an environment where we look for diversity in our vendor community. Really, it’s positive for the broader state of California; it also creates a healthier environment.

And for vendors, typically they’re looking for opportunities that are broader in scope and timeline. So becoming aligned to the strategic plan and what those items are is the right way to go. That’s usually the right time horizon to begin a new conversation about opportunities to partner.

We do share quite a bit of information about our technology environment in new contract solicitations. When we’re going out, we include bidders’ libraries that provide lots of great information about our environment, the tools that we’re using, and the processes that we expect the vendor to leverage.

IICA: On the personal side, do you have hobbies or passion projects?

Taylor: I’m a big reader. There’s a book that I have fallen totally in love with; this book in particular has really caught my interest over the last two months, and you can see I’ve got it marked up like crazy. It’s called Recoding America and it’s by an author named Jennifer Pahlka. Jennifer Pahlka was part of the new U.S. Digital Service, and so she was part of the federal government and doing digital transformation at the federal level. There are stories in here about transformation and efforts that the U.S. Digital Service made with California with EDD [Employment Development Department] and other state departments in California to help us make some of those transitions with our organizations. This book is going to be a guidepost. It has already become a bit of a guidepost for me about what product is in the context of state government, where you need to make a transformation in mindset in that longitudinal thinking, that long-term thinking about “How do you create and sustain an ever-evolving system?” You need to have a view of it as a product that is intended to create business outcomes that you’re then measuring against and leveraging the results of that measurement to make decisions about how to prioritize new changes to that product. It was a revolution. And so this book is a great hobby of mine — evangelizing it, reading it, looking at ways that Jennifer’s story and journey can inform the journey that DHCS will be making over the next 70 years.

I literally would turn every page and underline and take notes and things. I’ve never met her, but of course, I would love to one day. Hopefully, I can do so years from now, bringing with me stories from DHCS, about the journey that we’ve taken and the opportunities we’ve taken advantage of, the way we’re better meeting the needs of our ETS customers, as well as the citizens of California. … She changed my approach to driving change and transformation for technology to meet the needs of the business. It was a foundational book for me.