The community was created around the concept of “data science,” but since it launched in January 2025 it has dropped the “science” to embrace a broader swath of professionals who work with data across the state government.
“The goal is to broaden the group beyond data science to include things like data engineering and data governance,” Barb Cosio Moreno, spokesperson for ODI, wrote in an email to Industry Insider — California. “These are all areas ODI has subject matter expertise in.”
According to a recent blog post from ODI, the community grew from 18 members to 40 within its first year. Through resource sharing, quarterly meetings, informal conversation and other activities, the group has covered a variety of topics such as data culture, A/B testing and how to work with leadership.
The community also surveyed its initial members and presented some findings in the blog post:
- 89 percent used GitHub.
- All members used Python or R programming languages.
- Many said they were the only data scientist in their department.
- Technical challenges included lack of computational resources and lack of access to open source software.
